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Library of Che Theological Seminary 


PRINCETON -: NEW JERSEY 


CS): 
PRESENTED BY 


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c ohn B e W ae ed inrer 


British preachers 





Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/britishpreachersOOunse 


BRITISH PREACHERS 


BRITISH: PREACHERS 


The LORD ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH 
“Rev. G. A. STUDDERT KENNEDY, M.C. 

The Right Rev. GEORGE C. PIDGEON, D.D. 
Rev. Professor H. R. MACKINTOSH, D.Phil., D.D. 
The LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 

Rev. P. N. WAGGETT, D.D. 

Rev. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, D.D., D.Litt. 

Rev. W. R. MATTHEWS, D.D. 

Rev. ARCHIBALD FLEMING, M.A., T.D., D.D., H.C.F. 
Rev. Principal ALFRED E. GARVIE, D.D. 

Rev. Principal H. WHEELER ROBINSON, M.A. 
Rev. T. CHARLES WILLIAMS, D.D. 

Rev. JOHN WADDELL, M.A. 

Canon VERNON F. STORR, M.A. 

Rev. H. R. L. SHEPPARD, M.A. 

The LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY 

The Very Rev. RONALD G. MACINTYRE, O.B.E., D.D. 
Rev. ANDREW K. WALTON, M.A. 

The Right Rev. BISHOP TALBOT, D.D. 

Rev. DINSDALE T. YOUNG, D.D. 

Rev. J. SCOTT LIDGETT, D.D. 

Rev. ARTHUR J. GOSSIP, M.A. 

Rev. WILLIAM EDWIN ORCHARD, D.D. 

Rev. J. D. JONES, D.D. 


BRITISH PREAC 


SECOND SERIES 





Edited by 
SIR JAMES MARCHANT, K.B.E., LL.D. 


New York CHICAGO TORONTO 


Fleming H. Revell Company 


LoNDON AND EDINBURGH 


Made and Printed in Great Britain at the 
Botolph Printing Works, Gate Street, Kingsway, W.C.2 


EDITOR’S NOTE 


THE reception given throughout the United 
Kingdom, our Dominions, and America, to the 
first annual volume of ‘“ BRITISH PREACHERS,” 
has encouraged the publishers to continue the 
project. The selection for the present volume has 
been made with the help of the Rev. R. J. Campbell, 
D.D.; Principal Wheeler Robinson, M.A.; Mr. 
Sidney Dark, Editor of The Church Times; Dr. 
Jacks, Editor of Huzbbert’s Journal; the Rev. 
James Black, D.D., and the Rev. R. C. Gillie, 
D.C.L., to whom the Editor is indebted. 







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Contents 


Tue Licut tHat LicutetH Every Man. 


By C. F. D’Arcy 


REACTION AND REvoLT A 
By G. A. Studdert Kennedy 


Tue Prayer oF Faitu 
By G. C. Pidgeon 


SOLITUDE AND FaItTH 
By H. R. Mackintosh 


Tue Creep In THouGHT AND ACTION 
By F. Theodore Woods 


Tue EucuaristT as SACRIFICE 
By P. N. Waggett 


In THE SANCTUARY ¢ 
By J. Estlin Carpenter 


Tue PropLuemM or SUFFERING 
By W. R. Matthews 


PAGE 


15 


a0 


49 


63 


85 


107 


I2I 


CONTENTS 


THE ORDER OF THE COMPANIONS OF JESUS 
By Archibald Fleming 


Tue Gracious INvITATION 
By A. E. Garvie 


FORGIVENESS ; : 
By H. Wheeler Robinson 


Tue Law or LisBEerty 
By T. Charles Williams 


Reticion 1s Lire 
By John Waddell 


Toe Meraninc or Curistian DiscipLEsHiP 
By Vernon F. Storr 


Tue Test or Fait 
By H. R. L. Sheppard 


Tue Wortip or To-mMorRROW 
By St. Clair G. A. Donaldson 


In THE Becrnninc, Gop 
By R. G. Macintyre 


PAGE 


133 


fe, 


155 


169 


183 


197, 


209 


221 


231 


CONTENTS 


Tue Burssepness oF Mourninc 
By Andrew K. Walton 


A Srmprte Duty anp 1Ts Rewarp: Missions 
Past AND PRESENT 


By E. S. Talbot 


A Casuat Question AND 1Ts Mopern I[mptt- 
CATIONS ! : 
By Dinsdale T. Young 


y 


Tue Master Key 
By J. Scott Lidgett 


A Messacrt ror Grey Days 
By Arthur J. Gossip 


Gop’s ForciveNnEss DEPENDENT UPON Ours 
By W. E. Orchard 


How Jzsus Croszs THE Book . 
By J. D. Jones 


PAGE 


243 


253 


263 


273 


285 


395 


323 










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THE ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH 
Tue Most Rev. C. F. D’Arcy, D.D. 


THE ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH 
(The Most Rev. Charles Frederick D’Arcy, M.A., 
D.D.) 


Born in Dublin in 1859, he is a member of an 
ancient Anglo-Norman family, seated for many 
centuries in Co. Westmeath. First Science 
Scholar and Senior Moderator of Trinity College, 
Dublin, he obtained a First Class in Divinity, 
and was ordained in 1884. As a clergyman, he 
served for five years as a curate in Belfast, and 
for ten years in the rural parishes of Billy and 
Ballymena in Co. Antrim. In 1900 he became 
Vicar and Dean of Belfast, and in 1903 Bishop of 
Clogher. From Clogher he was translated to 
Ossory in 1908, and thence to Down in tort. 
In 1919 he was elected Archbishop of Dublin, and 
in I920 unanimously appointed Archbishop of 
Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. In 1920 
he became Hon. D.D. of Oxford. He has been 
several times Select Preacher before the Univer- 
sities of Dublin, Oxford and Cambridge. He was 
Donnellan Lecturer in 1897-98, and again in 
1913-14. Also Liverpool Lecturer in 1924. 
Among his published works are ‘‘A Short Study 
of Ethics,’’ which has been used as a text-book 
in the Universities of London, Calcutta, etc., and 
translated into Japanese for use in Tokio; 
‘“‘ Idealism and Theology”? (Donnellan Lectures) ; 
“God and Freedom in Human Experience ’’ 
(Donnellan Lectures, second series), and ‘‘ Science 
and Creation ’’ (Liverpool Lectures). 


THE bIGHER SHAT EIGHTETH 
EVERY MAN 


Tue ArRcHBISHOP OF ARMAGH 


“ There was the true light, even the light 
which lighteth every man, coming into the 
world.’ John i, 9g. (R.V.) 


THE Prologue to the Fourth Gospel is one of the 
greatest of all human utterances. Whether it be 
regarded in relation to religion, or theology, or 
philosophy, it has lived through the centuries as 
an inspiration to the mind as well as to the soul 
of man. The simplicity of its language is almost 
unrivalled: its depth of thought and the largeness 
of its conceptions are equally remarkable. Using 
terms which were then identified with a current 
philosophy of religion, it applies them, with a 
fresh significance, to those Christian experiences 
which were then regenerating human life. 

If we take the passage as a whole, we find that 
its earlier sentences deal with eternal principles, 
the later with historic events, in which those princi- 
ples find their signal application and fulfilment. 
The sentence I have taken as a text links together 
these two elements. It deals with eternal princi- 
ples, but with a view to that fulfilment in the person 
and life of Jesus Christ which gave to man a new 


% 


THE LIGHT THAT LIGHTETH EVERY MAN 


vision of the glory of God. The Divine Logos, the 
Light of the world, is the Light that lighteth every 
man, coming thus continually into the world. So 
we must, I think, interpret the saying. And from 
this continual coming, the thought passes on to the 
historic coming in the Person of Jesus Christ. “‘ The 
word became flesh and dwelt among us, and 
we beheld his glory.” The final test of truth 
is the appeal to experience: ‘‘ We beheld his 
glory.” 

The few short years of the ministry of Jesus, 
with their labours and sufferings, became, for those 
who witnessed them and entered into their meaning, 
the supreme revelation of the glory of God; and, at 
the same time, a demonstration of the Divine 
Image in man, in every man. A Divine Light 
shines in every human soul. It is the same Divine 
Light which, with unparalleled brightness, shines 
out upon the world from Christ. In Him, the Word, 
the Divine Logos, which is the Light of the world, 
“became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his 
glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, 
full of grace and truth.” 

It is not here only in the New Testament that 
this great doctrine of the relation of Christ to the 
previous history of humanity is to be found. In 
the opening words of the Epistle to the Hebrews is 
expressed a doctrine of Divine revelation which, 
if not as profound, involves the same conception of 
gradual approach to the supreme manifestation in 
Christ. ‘‘God who in divers parts and in divers 


4 


THE ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH 


manners spake in time past unto the fathers in the 
prophets, hath at the end of these days spoken unto 
us in his Son.” 

More remarkable still perhaps is the doctrine of 
St. Paul on the law of conscience. In the Epistle 
to the Romans he writes: ‘‘ When Gentiles which 
have no law do by nature the things of the law, 
these having no law are a law unto themselves; in 
that they shew the work of the law written in their 
hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, 
and their thoughts one with another accusing or else 
excusing them.” This great doctrine of a law 
written in the heart, in obedience to which Gentiles, 
who were outside the commonwealth of Israel and 
had no share in the teaching and discipline of the 
chosen people, could yet do God’s will and, as 
St. Paul implies, even endure the judgment of 
God, is one of the most splendid examples of the 
largeness of thought which characterises the great 
Apostle. 

Oh! that the Church of later ages had been 
guided by the teaching of the passages I have 
quoted! The world might then have been saved 
from the hardness, rigidity, and cruelty which mark 
so much of the theological thought of Western 
Christendom and of the policies which sprang 
from it. 

We are taught then to see a Divine element, a 
heavenly light, in the soul of every human being, 
whether he be Christian or non-Christian. I shall 
not ask you to consider the relation of this teaching 


5 


THE LIGHT THAT LIGHTETH EVERY MAN 


to the doctrine of original sin as held by the historic 
Churches. But we may consider, in passing, that 
here we have a question which is of great importance 
in relation to social and political life. Low views 
of man’s nature lead inevitably to degrading doc- 
trines and methods in statesmanship and public life. 
For example, it was held by Macchiavelli, whose 
political philosophy had a profound influence on 
modern statecraft, that men are so constituted that 
they will always do evil if they possibly can; and 
this doctrine forms the basis of all his constructive 
thought. On the other hand, the modern political 
idealist usually proceeds on the assumption that 
men will always do good if they get the chance. 
Both views are equally far from the teaching of 
experience. The truth is that, while there is, in 
every man, a Divine spark of good, both as regards 
innate capacity and definite tendency, there are 
also clamorous appetites and passions which too 
often refuse to obey the law written in the heart. 

My purpose in bringing this question before you 
this morning is not, however, either to turn your 
thoughts back upon old theological problems, or 
to invite you to consider the social and political 
controversies of the present day. My aim is to 
bring the Christian view of man into relation with 
the facts and truths revealed concerning him by 
modern science. The world of late has been keenly 
interested in watching certain events in America, 
where a powerful section of the people, strong in 
religious faith, and fearful lest any movement of 
6 


THE ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH 


scientific thought should undermine the foundations 
of Christian belief, have been deeply stirred by the 
teaching of the modern doctrine of evolution. As 
a result, all the conclusions of geology, biology and 
anthropology are being attacked with more zeal 
than knowledge, and considerable numbers of 
Christian people have come back to the position of 
fifty years ago, when science and religion were set 
in opposition to one another as irreconcilable foes. 
To one who can recall with great clearness the 
anxieties and controversies of that time, this seems 
extraordinary. Watching year after year the con- 
tinual modification of scientific thought, involving 
the gradual elimination of the elements which 
seemed really dangerous to religion, we had come 
to a settled conviction that Christian Faith had 
successfully passed through its ordeal; and that 
science might indeed be hailed as, in its own place 
and degree, a truly Divine revelation. 

It is the scientific doctrine of the descent of man, 
as we know him, from more primitive forms of life 
which especially stirs the apprehensions of so many 
earnest Christian people. But why? Surely, if 
we have grasped the teaching of the great utterance 
recorded of our Lord in the fifth chapter of St. John, 
“My Father worketh even until now and I work,” 
we must realise that the conception of creation 
as a continuous process, going on throughout the 
ages, finds its place, as a deeper truth, in the teaching 
of the New Testament. But this passage does not 
stand alone. As we have seen, the conception of 


ze 7 


THE LIGHT THAT LIGHTETH EVERY MAN 


the Divine Logos, the Light which lighteth every 
man, coming continuously into the world, until it 
appears with unique and supreme splendour in 
the Person of Jesus Christ, is the central teaching 
of the Prologue to this Gospel. It is the same truth 
which, as we have also seen, is taught with perfect 
clearness in the opening words of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, a gradual age-long revelation corresponding 
exactly with gradual age-long creation. 

Now the great story of creation unfolded by 
modern science can no longer, with reason, be 
regarded as materialistic in tendency. or consider 
what that story records. A most marvellous 
advance, in which the following stages may be 
noted: the formation of the stellar and solar 
systems; the cooling of the earth and its shaping 
into continents and seas; the emergence of condi- 
tions which made life as we know it possible; the 
development of the vegetable and animal series in 
parallel lines, the one depending on the other; 
the higher organisation of animal life through the 
formation of a nervous system, and of brain; the 
appearance of man with his greater intelligence ; 
the making of human society; the passage from 
lower human types to higher; the emergence of 
civilisation, of literature, art, science, religion. 

Of such a marvellous order in creation there can 
be but one satisfactory explanation. Here is no 
series of happy accidents. The creative power 
which is behind the whole process was surely guided 
by a world-embracing purpose. That purpose was 
8 


THE ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH 


to create a society of intelligent moral beings, 
capable of knowledge, will, love—capable too of 
seeking those eternal things which belong to the 
realm of the spiritual. 

This view of the creative process is not only in 
perfect harmony with the results of scientific 
research, it also affords a larger and grander interpre- 
tation of those great religious experiences which 
are recorded in the Bible and which have been 
manifested in Christian life from the beginning. It 
further exhibits in a very wonderful way the relation 
of the Person and Work of Christ to all creation. 

The earlier stages of the creative process con- 
cerned the development of the vast mechanism of 
the material universe. In due time, when the 
necessary conditions had arisen, life appeared. 
At first, in forms so elemental that they are not 
easily distinguishable from the crystallisations of 
chemical processes. But soon there appear forms 
which display a new power—a power of self-direction. 
We usually think of that strange power which we 
call Will, as a possession belonging to the higher 
grades only of animate existence. Some have 
thought of it as an exclusively human possession. 
No doubt this is true of its highest development. 
But now science is revealing the wonderful fact that 
some true degree of self-direction is to be found 
very far down in animal life. Even those invisible 
animated jellies which inhabit every pool show 
some beginnings of that power which, in ourselves, 
we call the power of Will. And, mark, with the 


9 


THE LIGHT THAT LIGHTETH EVERY MAN 


emergence of this power there also emerge those 
powers which we call feeling and intelligence. Very 
faint at first, these powers grow in clearness and 
strength, all through the long history of animate 
being, until they reach their culmination in the life 
of man. 

Here we find the source of the tremendous struggle 
of life, with all its joys and sorrows, its pleasures 
and pains, its rewards and disappointments, its 
good and evil. These all spring from the same 
origin—the gift of Will. It is because of this that 
there is, and must be, a Law of Righteousness, a 
moral conflict, temptation, a choice between good 
and evil, a possibility of sin. 

We are now in a position to see that the Creator, 
when He imparted to His creatures some degree 
of His own qualities of knowledge and will, launched 
His Creation upon a supreme adventure. In the 
course of that adventure have come all the pains 
and agonies as well as all the pleasures and joys 
of life, all its sins and horrors as well as its attain- 
ments and blessings. 

Now the very meaning of the Christian message 
to the world is that He from Whom we derive our 
being has not left us to our self-made fate, but that, 
entering into our life, taking our nature upon Himself, 
sharing our struggles, He is winning our victory. 
And the crowning glory of Christianity is this— 
the Faith that, in Christ, God is using suffering and 
death, the curses of our life, as the means of our 
deliverance. Here is the eternal significance of 
10 


THE ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH 


the Cross of Christ. Only one power can overcome 
the opposition of contending wills and combine them 
in a moral harmony. That power is Love. And 
Love accomplishes its purpose by sacrifice. Taking 
upon Himself the sorrows and sufferings which 
afflict us, God is able to win us to Himself. In the 
might of this eternal love, and with all eternity 
before Him, we must believe that He will conquer 
evil and perfect His creation. And so it is that 
St. John, having caught the vision of the Divine 
Word at the beginning, and again as the Light of 
all history, is able to say: “‘The Word became 
flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory.”’ 


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Rev. G. A. STUDDERT KENNEDY, M.C. 


THE REV G. A. STUDDERT REN NEDY 
M.C. 


Or Irish extraction, Geoffrey A. Studdert Kennedy 
was brought up in Leeds, where his father was 
vicar of a parish in a poor district. Kennedy was 
educated at Leeds Grammar School and Trinity 
College, Dublins In 1908 he was ordained by the 
Bishop of Worcester and went to work at Rugby 
under the present Dean of Windsor. He was 
eventually returned to assist his father in his slum 
parish in Leeds, and in 1914 he was appointed 
Vicar of St. Paul’s, Worcester, a very poor parish 
of some 3,000 souls. He served as a temporary 
Chaplain to the forces on the Western Front from 
1916 to 1919, and was awarded the Military Cross 
in 1917. He is at present Rector of St. Edmund 
the King and Martyr, Lombard Street, and 
Honorary Messenger of the Industrial Christian 
Fellowship. Among his publications are: ‘‘ The 
Hardest Part,” “ Lies,’”’ “‘ Food for the Fed-up,” 
“The Sorrows of God,’ ‘‘The Wicket Gate,” 
‘*The Word and the Work.” 


REACTION AND REVOLT 
Tue Rev. G. A. Stuppert Kennepy, M.C. 


“I have given you an example that ye should 
do as I have done.”’ John xiii, 15. 


Or all God’s creatures, man is the only one that 
lives looking backwards and forwards at the same 
time. He alone lives with the echo of the hour 
that has struck and the anticipation of the hour 
that is to strike, acting together in his mind. To 
all other creatures the past is dim, being preserved 
only in the semi-physical memory of acquired 
habits; the past is dim and the future non-existent. 
But for man it is almost true to say that the past 
and the future are more important than the present, 
for if I could take away from you your memories 
of the past, your hopes, your fears and dreams of 
the future, there would be but little left. 

It is toa great extent this double power of memory 
and anticipation that has raised man to his present 
position of supremacy in creation. But like all 
great powers it carries with it deadly dangers and 
grave responsibilities. The chiefest danger lies in 
the temptation to use the past and future as means 
of escape from the difficulties of the present rather 
than as aids to the facing and overcoming of them. 

For most human beings the present is more or 


15 


REACTION AND REVOLT 


less painful and unsatisfactory. A thoroughly 
contented man is bound to be either a bit of a fool 
or a bit of a saint. Certainly anyone who is thor- 
oughly contented with the world as he finds it to-day 
must be suffering either from softening of the 
brain or hardening of the heart, or both, for both, 
alas! are common complaints. 

‘“‘ Divine discontent ’’ is a catch phrase too often 
and too loosely used to-day, for much of our human 
discontent is devilish rather than divine. But there 
is truth in the phrase for all that. Discontents are 
the growing pains of a creature not complete and 
destined to a higher mode of life. But there les 
the danger, for men, being discontented with the 
present, are tempted to turn from it and take refuge 
either in the past or in the future. They idealise 
the past, or glorify the future, and so tend to live 
in an unreal world wrought out of their own im- 
aginations, hovering about in the never-never-land 
between the Garden of Eden and the Golden Age. 

In the history of mankind, as in the life story of 
any individual man or woman, there are periods 
of both kinds—backward looking periods and forward 
looking periods; they are moods of the universal, 
as they are moods of the individual, human soul. 

On the surface it would seem as though our dis- 
tracted modern world were torn between the two, 
as though the whole race of men were divided into 
two great hosts, the army of those who look back- 
ward into the past, and the army of those who look 
forward into the future. It would seem as though 
16 


REV. G. A. STUDDERT KENNEDY 


the issue of our time lay between the forces of 
reaction and the forces of revolt. To millions of the 
very best men and women the present is quite 
intolerable and they are looking wildly round for a 
refuge from it. Some find it in the past. They 
long to revive the “ good old days’’ when masters 
were masters and men were men, when property 
was really private property and possessors could do 
what they would with their own; when trades 
unions ceased from troubling and employers were at 
rest; the days when governments kept to their 
proper sphere and neither meddled nor muddled as 
they do to-day; the days when Sovereign in- 
dependence meant Sovereign independence, and 
national patriotism was enough. All their glories 
are glories of the past, andif they look forward it 
is to a future which is to be a repetition and extension 
of the past. And so they wave the good old flag 
and sing : 


Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free, 

How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee ? 
Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set ; 
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet. 


But there are millions of other men to whom the 
past means nothing, or even worse than nothing. 
They find in it little glory and no hope. The 
working men of England have begun to read 
history and they do not find it inspiring. They 
read it through smoked spectaclés—they cannot 


17 


REACTION AND REVOLT 


altogether help that because they live in the clouds 
of smoke and somehow that makes them see red. 
They do not go far back as a rule. It is mainly the 
history of Industrialism they read, and over that 
there hangs a perpetual cloud of smoke and shame, 
of dirt and cruelty. They are frankly cynical about 
the past. ‘‘ Mother of the Free’ is mockery to 
them, and “ wider still and wider shall thy bounds 
be set” they would say, with a sneer, was “‘ camou- 
flage’’ for Economic Imperialism. 

There are few subjects which have been so badly 
taught in our schools as history, and our people 
pay a penalty for it. The boy of 14 faces a world 
with a past which is to him nothing but a mist 
through which unreal kings and queens loom up 
like phantoms rising and falling mid wars and 
rumours of wars. When he begins to read history 
in the Labour College or through the Labour Press 
with Marx as his master, all that he has learned 
becomes to him a farrago of vicious nonsense, and 
he learns what he believes to be the reality of history, 
and it is nothing but a grim, grey, sordid struggle 
against oppression and wrong. 

And so the past is positively repulsive to him, 
even more repulsive than the present, and he there- 
fore throws himself into the future. Repudiating 
absolutely his debt to the past, he paints the future 
in glowing colours, a world in which there are to be 
no masters, where all men are to be free and equal ; 
where all will work and no one work very hard ; 
where all will have enough and none too much; a 
18 


REV. G. A. STUDDERT KENNEDY 


world wherein man may take his ease and live, where 
the buzzers cease their buzzing and workmen can 
have rest. He calls this fair land the “ Socialist 
Commonwealth.” It is for him the heaven of his 
dreams. 

There are millions of men still for whom Socialism 
and hope are but two names for one thing, and 
therein lies its strength. Sometimes I have a fear 
of what will happen when they realise, as they must 
realise, that the hope is largely vain. 

On the surface it would seem as though the real 
issue lay between these two armies, the one looking 
back to the splendours of the past, the other looking 
forward to the glory of the future. But, if we look 
deeper, it becomes clear that there is no real issue 
between them, they are both dreaming, and whether 
a man dreams of the past or dreams of the future 
makes little difference in reality so long as he only 
dreams. Moreover, it is essentially the same dream 
that comes to both in a different form. They both 
want peace, they want to be free from responsibility 
and strain; unconsciously they want to sleep. It 
is a human, all too human, want; for the basic 
human sins are sloth and pride. When we talked 
after the War of a “land fit for heroes to live in”’ 
what we really meant was a land fit for sluggards 
to sleep in, and it was natural enough. We had 
been torn and bruised and battered, we had wept and 
been wounded in body and mind, and we wanted 
to sleep. We wanted and we still want to escape 
from sordid reality, and have a little peace. 


TQ 


REACTION AND REVOLT 


But that kind of peace is only found in the never- 
never-land of mad ideals and wild dreams. God 
will not let us sleep. All down the ages He has 
stung, whipped, called, wooed, driven, aye, some- 
times it would seem tortured men into life—more 
life—yet man is only half awake, for the last enemy 
that shall be overcome is death or sloth. 

Now Christianity has always bid men look forward, 
and look forward to a kingdom not only in Heaven 
but here on earth. Has she not always bidden her 
children pray as he prayed ‘‘ Thy Kingdom come on 
earth as itis in heaven ”’ ? But before the gates of the 
Kingdom it has always put two things, a Cross anda 
Judgment Seat. There isa Kingdom coming, it says, 
if you can make a sacrifice and stand a test. It has 
always preached judgment as the very essence of life. 
This truth all our modern knowledge of the tragic 
and terrible process by which we have come to be 
what we are, goes to substantiate, making it clearer 
and clearer that through all the length and breadth 
of the great sweep of life, from the lowliest creature 
to the full grown man, the process of natural selection 
runs and that there is no escape from it for any 
living thing. Whether you call it “natural 
selection ’’ or “‘ Divine judgment ”’ makes but little 
difference. As applied to men and nations “‘ Divine 
judgment ”’ is the more accurate and comprehensive 
term, for it emphasises the moral standard, as well 
as insisting upon the universal process of judg- 
ment. Civilisation is a perpetual process of moral 
judgment. Every new advance is a moral test 
20 


REV. G. A. STUDDERT KENNEDY 


and challenge to which we must either respond or 
perish. 

It is this inevitable testing that both reactionaries 
and revolutionaries seek to evade, but seek in vain, 
for as God’s great purpose works itself out in history, 
the world in which we live makes higher and higher 
demands upon our moral nature, and it is only as 
we answer to these moral demands that any real 
progress can be made. First and foremost it would 
seem that God demands of men to-day a moral 
virtue the nature of which is as yet but little under- 
stood, humility. Without humility man can never 
be fit to bear the enormous weight of responsibility 
that the development of science and his new control 
over Nature impose upon him. Power tends to 
drive men mad and make them imagine that they 
can actually possess the world and use it for their 
own paltry purposes. But sooner or later they 
must awake from their frenzy and their dream, 


The tumult and the shouting dies, 
The Captains and the Kings depart, 

Still stands thine ancient sacrifice 
An humble and a contrite heart. 

Lord God of Hosts be with us yet— 
Lest we forget. Lest we forget. 


Only as we grow to see the truth that, over 
and against ourselves, there is for ever set in awful 
and mysterious Majesty, One who is wholly Other, 
and infinitely greater, than ourselves, to whom and 

20 


REACTION AND REVOLT 


to whom alone the world and all that is in it belongs, 
to whom we ourselves belong, and whose Will we 
must submit to or miserably perish; only so can 
we remain sane and sober in possession of the new 
and perilous powers that we have been entrusted 
with. 

Particularly is it true that, without and apart 
from this deep sense of the reality of God and of 
responsibility to Him, the institution of private 
property under modern conditions will not work. 
The enormous aggregations of capital which are 
necessary in an industrial civilisation put into the 
hands of those who legally own and practically 
administer them, such great and far-reaching powers 
over their fellow men, that, unless there is in the 
legal owners a tremendous sense of responsibility, 
a. deep-seated conviction that their wealth is a trust 
fund, to be held and administered as a trust fund, they 
lead to quite intolerable inequalities, tyrannies and 
injustices which render the maintenance of the public 
peace well-nigh impossible. The purely mechanical 
device of shifting the power out of the hands of the 
self-seeking few and putting it into the hands of the 
self-seeking many, must prove vain and _ futile. 
It merely supplants those who are quite possibly 
knaves but not generally fools, and puts in their 
places those who almost certainly are both knaves 
and fools. To put one lot of bumptious sinners out 
of power, and another lot of bumptious sinners in, is 
not the way to make a new heaven or a new earth. 

There is no escape from the test. Above and 
22 


REV. G, 4. STUDDERT KENNEDY 


beyond all others those who possess wealth and the 
power wealth bestows, need Christ. They need to 
be brought up and to live in the knowledge of what 
He revealed, that every crown is a crown of thorns, 
and every throne a Cross of sacrifice. No crown is 
safe that does not wound, no throne secure that does 
not serve. Since He passed on His way to Calvary 
to His coronation as King of Kings and Lord of 
Lords, the only Ruler of princes, the meaning of 
power has been revealed as Love which suffers, and 
suffering, serves. 

It is this splendid and tragic truth that we must 
somehow bring home again to the heart of the 
nation and especially to the leaders and teachers 
of the people, all little kings on little thrones— 
leaders of capital, leaders of labour, leaders of 
thought and leaders of fashion—the great ones of 
the earth must be like Him, the suffering servants 
of mankind. 

We are a good-natured and kindly people and 
our great men have always been open handed and 
generous, but much more than good nature is 
needed now. Good nature and generosity as a 
substitute for real humility is an imposture and a 
sham. We must have the real thing, the conscious 
submission of the human to the Divine, the manifest 
and obvious holding of wealth and power as a trust 
and responsibility. It is quite impossible to convince 
men who are suffering privation and hardship that 
our social order is just and righteous, when every 
picture paper supplies them with evidence that 


C 23 


REACTION AND REVOLT | 


men of power and wealth are careless, irresponsible 
and even profligate. Envy, hatred, malice and all 
uncharitableness issuing in cynicism, suspicion and 
mistrust are bred in the hearts of men who have the 
bitter contrasts of our modern life placarded before 
their eyes. A plutocracy is a deadly thing unless 
it can develop a real aristocracy of merit. And so 
above all things there is need that, from the top to 
the bottom of society, there should run a sense of 
the awfulness and majesty of God, in trust from 
Whom we hold every power and every privilege we 
possess, and even the breath of life itself. 

A public schoolboy in one of our great public 
schools remarked the other day to a master who 
is a friend of mine: “I cannot see the necessity 
for all this teaching about religion and social 
problems. What use is it to us? We want to 
know how to behave ourselves among decent 
cultured people, and maintain our position in life.”’ 
That is a perfectly ruinous idea. No man is really 
fit to lead or rule, even as a very petty king in a 
very tiny province of God’s world, unless he has in 
his inmost soul knelt at the feet of that stupendous 
and awful mystery, the King who is crowned with 
agony and throned on the throne of pain, and has 
there offered up the ancient sacrifice of a “‘ humble 
and a contrite heart,’’ with all his pride in birth, 
power, wealth or ability, shattered and beaten to 
dust, with the wonder of his own infinite littleness 
and Christ’s infinite greatness stabbing at his vitals 
like a knife. 


24 


REV. G. A. STUDDERT KENNEDY 
Let us pray that as the nation stands by the 


graves of those who suffered for our sake, and owns 
them great, we may consecrate ourselves afresh to 
the service of the King Who reigns from the Cross. 


Still I see them coming, coming, 
In their ragged broken line, 

Walking wounded in the sunlight, 
Clothed in majesty divine. 


For the fairest of the lilies 
That God’s summer ever sees, 
Ne’er was clothed in royal beauty 
Such as decks the least of these. 


Tattered, torn, and bloody khaki, 
Gleams of white flesh in the sun, 
Raiment worthy of their beauty 
And the great things they have done. 


Purple robes and snowy linen 
Have for earthly kings sufficed, 

But these bloody sweaty tatters 
Were the robes of Jesus Christ. 


25 


h ! 
ib ae | 





Tue Ricut Rev. G. C. PIDGEON, D.D. 


THE RIGHT REVEREND GEORGE 
C. PIDGEON, B.D., D.D. 


First Moderator of the United Church of Canada. 
Prior to his appointment as head of the United 
Church, Dr. Pidgeon was unanimously elected 
Moderator of the last General Assembly of the 
Presbyterian Church in Canada, which met in 
Toronto on June 3rd, 1925. Dr. Pidgeon 
continues as Minister of Bloor Street United 
Church, Toronto, during his term as Moderator, 
which extends over a period of one year. Son 
of the late Archibald M. Pidgeon and Mary 
Campbell of Grand Cascapedia, Quebec. Educated 
at Morrin College, McGill University and the 
Presbyterian Theological College, all of Montreal, 
Quebec. From 1903-1909, Minister of Streets- 
ville Presbyterian Church, Ontario; 1909-1915, 
Professor of Practical Theology in Westminster 
Hall, Vancouver, British Columbia; 1915 was 
called to Bloor Street Presbyterian Church, now 
Bloor Street United Church. Served as President 
of the Social Service Council of British Columbia, 
and as Convener of the General Assembly’s Board 
of Home Missions and Social Service for Canada. 
Represented the National Council Y.M.C.A. in 
France for seven months during 1917 and 1918. 


EPR AN ERG) bs ATT Ey 
Tue Ricut Rev. Georce C. Prpcton, D.D. 


“Tf ye abide in me, and my words abide in 
you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be 
done unto you.” John xv, 7. 


BEFORE the average Christian’s mind is the glaring 
fact of unanswered prayer. God has promised 
to answer prayer and has not answered him in 
that on which he staked everything. If he could 
solve this problem he could believe anything. 

Yet would you be willing to take the responsi- 
bility of having all your prayers answered? Is 
your judgment so sound, your wisdom so unerring, 
and your knowledge of all the issues involved so 
complete that you believe it to be best for you 
and for all concerned that every desire of your heart 
should be granted? Monica, the mother of St. 
Augustine, longed for her son’s salvation and 
prayed for it day and night. When he proposed 
going to Rome, she dreaded the effect of the great 
metropolis on his passionate nature and prayed 
that he might be hindered. Yet he was allowed 
to go. Apparently her prayer was denied. But, 
as her son said years after, God in so doing granted 
her the hinge of her desire, for it was through his 
crossing the Mediterranean that he was finally 


a9 


THE PRAYER OF FAITH 


converted. Often we ask amiss because we do not 
know. Often we ask amiss because our hearts are 
wrong, and we desire either wrong things or right 
things for wrong ends. Often we ask amiss because 
we cling to the lower, and God wants to wean us 
from the lower and win us to the higher. If God 
be a father, at once infinitely wise and loving, do 
we not in our heart of hearts want Him to choose 
for us the best? I doubt not that an examination 
of the Church’s experiences will show that her 
unanswered prayers are among her choicest treasures, 

Then why pray at all? Why not let God choose 
for us? One answer is that we pray because we 
must. Our souls thirst for the living God, and 
in earth’s parched wilderness they cry out for His 
presence. As Augustine says: “ Thou hast made 
us for Thyself and our souls are restless until they 
find rest in Thee.”” Further, we pray because we 
desire what prayer brings. Prayer denied is not 
the Christian’s normal experience; prayer as a 
factor in human life must not be judged by its 
standard. Prayer is a force; it produces results, 
God encourages prayer, and we offer it in order that 
His grace may be directed to the place it is required. 

With these thoughts as a background, let us study 
briefly Christ’s teachings on the subject of prayer and 
their verification by the experience of His followers. 


First, Christ teaches in the most positive way 
that prayer brings answers. This is the plain 
statement of our text. When a believer, living in 


30 


RIGHT REV..G. C. PIDGEON 


vital union with Christ, sees from that viewpoint 
that any particular thing is desirable and asks for 
it, he shallreceiveit. This is the law of the Kingdom 
of Heaven. You will note the implied limitation. 
It is those who are one with Himself and who pray 
in His Spirit to whom the promise is given. But, 
that granted, the statement is most explicit and 
emphatic. The normal thing is that prayer should 
get what it asks. The unanswered prayer is the 
exception to the rule. 

Still more definite are Christ’s teachings on the 
same subject elsewhere. In Matthew vii, 7-11 
and the parallel passage in Luke xi, 9-13, He says: 
“ Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall 
find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for 
every one that asketh receiveth; and he that 
seeketh findeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall 
be opened.”’ 

Then, in explaining why this should be, he adds: 
“Or what man is there of you, who, if his son shall 
ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone; or if he 
shall ask for a fish, will give him a serpent ? ” 

Or, as Luke puts it: “If he ask an egg, will he 
offer him a scorpion ?”’ 

He concludes: ‘If ye then, being evil, know how 
to give good gifts unto your children, how much 
more shall your Father which is in heaven give good 
things to them that ask Him.” 

You will note here the following. The Son of 
Man goes right to the heart of things as no other 
can do. Prayer is the approach of the soul to God 


ae 


THE PRAYER OF FAITH 


as a child approaches its father, and the Father 
loves to supply those things which the child desires. 
Why should prayer be answered ? Because there is 
a heart behind the universe which responds to the 
longings of ours, and is vibrant with sympathy 
for our need. When we ask He delights to give. 

These illustrations brush aside many difficulties 
which men feel about the efficacy of prayer. For 
example, this is a universe governed by law and 
God cannot interfere with its operation. Any well- 
ordered home is regulated by law, but yet in how 
many ways a father manages to gratify his little 
one’s heart and still maintain those laws. Or again, 
God’s righteousness requires Him to give us only 
what He sees to be best. Our prayers, therefore, 
can make no difference and would be wrong if 
they could. Life in a home answers this objection 
also. There a wise parent keeps his child’s interests 
before his mind in everything that he gives him, 
and will refuse any request rather than injure him. 
But in a myriad ways he gives the child what he 
wishes while still serving his child’s good. Love 
is an inventive genius in its plans to please and to 
bless, and to harmonise the two when they seem 
opposed, and the love of God puts no limit to His 
kindness to His child. 

The Master, however, does not leave the matter 
there. As if facing the question whether the 
presenting of the request can make any difference 
in the dealings of an all-loving God, the Master gives 
two parables in illustration of His position. One 


32 


RIGHT REV. G. C. PIDGEON 


is the parable of the man who comes at midnight 
asking for bread to supply his guest’s wants (Luke xi, 
5-8). The friend is unwilling to disturb his whole 
family by rising at that hour, but the visitor will 
not take ‘“‘ No” for an answer. And, Christ affirms, 
“because of his importunity’’ he gets what he 
would not have gotten otherwise. His persistence 
and insistence, and nothing else, breaks down his 
friend’s unwillingness. Following out this thought, 
Luke gives the passage just quoted, which teaches 
that those who ask get for the asking. 

The other parable, the Unjust Judge, points the 
same lesson (Luke xvii, 1-8). This judge had no 
regard for justice, and when a widow appealed to 
him for the righting of her wrongs he refused her 
any consideration. But she kept coming and was 
likely to keep on coming indefinitely and to use 
still more strenuous measures to emphasise her plea. 
The margin of the Revised Version renders verse 5: 
“Because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge 
her lest she bruise me by her continual coming.” 
She was evidently something of a militant—that 
petitioner of olden time—and there was no telling 
what she might do to a judge who denied her justice. 
In following the thought out Jesus says that if these 
people, the judge who cared for neither God nor 
man, the friend at midnight who hated to have his 
family disturbed, and the earthly father, would 
hearken to petitions under the circumstances 
indicated, how much more will God hear the prayers 
and supply the needs of His children. 


33 


THE PRAYER OF FAITH 


Prayer, therefore, is a power. Prayer brings 
results. God gives to prayerfulness what He does 
not give to prayerlessness no matter how efficient 
otherwise the prayerless may be. God loves to be 
trusted ; He wants us to expect large things from 
Him; and He “ will supply all our need according 
to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”’ 


“Thou art coming to a King ; 
Large petitions with thee bring ; 
For His grace and power are such, 
None can ever ask too much.”’ 


Now, when all this is said, any soul who has wrestled 
with God in prayer knows that we have touched 
only the fringe of the subject. 


Second, Christ teaches that the very heart of 
prayer consists in personal dealings between the 
soul and God. The object desired is the occasion 
for coming; the chief boon is the fellowship it brings 
about. Christ’s own example in prayer shows the 
closest relations as existing between Him and His 
Father. In fact, His mind and heart were so open 
to God that He discerned instinctively the Father’s 
will in each particular matter which came before 
Him, and made it the object of His life to do it. 
His apostles discerned the same truth and their 
prayer life was lived in communion with God. 

(rt) James has a striking phrase in chapter 5, 
verse 15: “The prayer of faith.’’ This phrase 
does not mean simply saying, after offering a prayer 


o4 


RIGHT REF. G. C. PIDGEON 


to God, ‘‘ Now I believe that this will be done. 
God has promised to answer prayer; I take Him at 
His word and know that what I ask He will give.”’ 
The Godward movements of the soul do not take 
place in that easy and superficial fashion. The 
phrase, “‘ The prayer of faith’’ means the prayer 
which is pressed until God indicates to the believer 
that it is His will to grant it. Then a man accepts 
God’s assurance that his prayer is heard and acts 
on it. In I John v, 15, this truth is put thus: 
“Tf we know that he hear us, we know that we 
have the petitions we desire of him.”’ 

Side by side with this phrase place Ephesians ii, 8 : 
“For by grace have ye been saved through faith ; 
and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” 
That is to say, even the faith which receives is the 
gift of God. Not only does God give salvation 
freely ; He gives also the faith which receives it. 
He enables the sinner to believe unto salvation. 
Grace is needed for men to accept, and God imparts 
it to the soul that is willing. In that light “ The 
prayer of faith’ includes both man’s supplication 
and God’s assent. It is an accepted cheque on the 
bank of grace, and the resources of the eternal are 
behind it. 

What then is prayer? It means pressing our 
plea until we receive a response from God indicating 
His willin the matter. It may be assent; it may be 
refusal. Sometimes the plea will dry on your lips 
when you bring it to God, and you feel that in His 
presence you cannot press it. Sometimes you will 


35 


THE PRAYER OF FAITH 


be ‘‘ drawn out” as the fathers used to say, until 
you feel that His will is behind your plea. But 
whatever the answer our hearts come into touch 
with God, and that is the important thing in 
prayer. 

(2) There are a number of cases of prayer refused. 
In Deuteronomy ii, 23-28, Moses describes how 
he repeated his request to be allowed to go over the 
Jordan and see the good land for himself. But the 
Lord replied: ‘“‘ Let it suffice thee ; speak no more 
to me on this matter.’ Then God told him the 
preparations he was to make for Joshua to lead 
the people over. In II Corinthians xu, 7-10, Paul 
describes how he pled with God to remove his thorn 
in the flesh, and God said: ‘‘ My grace is sufficient 
for thee : for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 
That is to say, God denied the lower blessing in 
order that he might give a higher. The limitations 
of Paul’s nature were such that he could not receive 
the two, and God made the refusal of the lower the 
occasion and instrument for conferring the higher. 
Whenever Paul saw that element in the situation, 
he exclaimed: ‘‘ Most gladly, therefore, will I 
rather glory in my weakness that the power of 
Christ may rest upon me.” In neither case was God 
silent. Denial of the request did not mean the 
closing of the Father’s heart against His child. He 
replied, and the love of the response, even in refusal, 
put the heart at rest. 

The great example, however, is Christ’s prayer in 
Gethsemane: ‘‘ Abba, Father, all things are possible 
36 


RIGHT REV. G. C. PIDGEON 


unto thee; remove this cup from me; howbeit 
not what I will, but what thou wilt.’’ There has 
always been a good deal of discussion about whether 
Christ’s plea was really granted or not ; Hebrews v, 7, 
seems to suggest that it was. But the significant 
fact is that Christ recognised that it might be 
refused. The reason was that He saw the 
possibility of a difference between His personal will 
and the absolutely perfect will of the Father, and, 
while He prayed until the blood drops fell, He 
hastened to add to every petition, “ Not my will 
but thine be done.’’ Prayer can never mean the 
perfect union of the soul with God until we are 
brought to this position—while we desire this, or 
that, perhaps with the utmost intensity, our soul’s 
deepest choice is that God should do only what is 
perfectly right and absolutely the best. Grant our 
request if He can consistently with this, but if it is 
a case of subordinating the one to the other, let the 
Father’s will be done. 

It is on this principle—God cannot give what is 
inconsistent with His own nature. When we ask 
in ignorance what He sees to be hurtful, or wrong, 
He can but deny His child’s request. Further, we 
are living in a world of sin and suffering, and many 
a thing that is good in itself is harmful in the circum- 
stances. Strong food is good in itself, but it would 
kill a typhoid patient. Wealth is a blessing, but in 
a weak man’s hands it has often proven a curse. 
There are innumerable considerations which 
determine the effect of what is received on the 


37 


THE PRAYER OF FAITH 


receiver, and a wise and loving Father must take 
them all into account. 

A missionary of exceptional experience and discern- 
ment once gave the following example, which may 
prove an illustration of the point before us. The 
dread of the missionary is the rice Christian. For 
the converts to lean on the mission for support is 
to ruin them, and for the heathen to feel that con- 
version means financial assistance is to ruin the 
Church. Yet, this missionary explained, his con- 
verts in abject need often came to him for help. He 
was compelled to refuse them. With an Oriental’s 
persistence they would ask: ‘‘ Do you not love 
me? ’’ He. would’ answer's: “ ‘Yes.’*\) “/Aremiyou 
not able to help me?’”’ He would be compelled 
to answer: “‘ Yes.” “Then why will you not 
do it?’ ‘“‘ Because it is not good for you.”” Then 
they would reflect: “‘ You say you love me, you 
are able to help me, and yet you will not do it 
because it is not good for me. I cannot see that.” 
Yet I think that we can appreciate both the convert’s 
difficulty and the missionary’s position. His love 
both for those people and for the cause of Christ 
compelled him to refuse. Does not this principle 
apply to many a prayer for wealth and for deliverance 
from present difficulty? May it not often apply 
to prayers for the restoration of the sick and the 
sparing of life? We may not be able to see how 
anything but what we desire can possibly be God’s 
will, but does not this human experience show 
that God may see differently, and that.when He does 
38 


RIGHT REV. G. C. PIDGEON 


see differently He is right ? We must trust where 
Wwe cannot understand, but the blessed thing in 
prayer is that God, in keeping from us the hurtful 
thing we long for, will do it in such a way as to 
bring us closer to His heart, and to impart the 
deepest joy, if only we continue in prayer until 
He responds, 


‘‘ Disappointment—His appointment : 
Change one letter, then I see 
That the thwarting of my purpose 
Is God’s better choice for me. 
His appointment must be blessing 
Tho’ it may come in disguise, 
For the end from the beginning 

Open to His wisdom lies. 


“ Disappointment—His appointment : 

No good thing will He withhold 

From denials oft we gather 
Treasures of His love untold. 

Well He knows each broken purpose 
Leads to fuller, deeper trust, 

And the end of all His dealings 
Proves our God is wise and just.” 


There is need for submission here. Sometimes 
people have persisted stubbornly in a request, 
which was opposed to God’s revealed will, and the 
result has been disastrous. Balaam prayed for 
leave to go with the messengers of the King of 


D 39 


THE PRAYER OF FAITH 


Moab and God refused it (Numbers xxii). They 
returned a second time, and the prophet, attracted 
by the promised rewards, repeated the plea when 
he knew it to be against God’s will, and God allowed 
him to go. But as the angel showed him on the 
way, the permission was given in anger and Balaam 
went to his undoing. God sent Hezekiah word 
that his illness would result in death. Hezekiah 
would not accept it “and wept sore” and prayed 
for restoration. God granted him fifteen years 
more of life (Isaiah xxxvili). In those years came 
all the mistakes and calamities of Hezekiah’s reign. 
In my experience as a pastor, I have known people 
say that they could not and would not believe a 
certain request to be contrary to God’s will, and 
that they could never believe in Him again if it 
were refused, and then live to wish, with an inex- 
pressibly deeper longing, that it had been denied. 
Press your prayer home by all means; God desires 
you to do so and it honours Him. Let no weak 
acquiescence in what you do not understand rob 
you of your blessing. But when God makes it 
clear to your soul that His will lies in a different 
direction, bow before His wisdom and love. He 
knows best, and “‘ To them that love God all things 
will work together for good.” 

(3) There are many instances of God’s assent 
to such petitions. We may take the Master’s 
example as our guide here. You may have noted 
the peculiar character of His prayer at Lazarus’ 
tomb, He came there with the full assurance that 


40 


RIGHT REV. G. C. PIDGEON 


Lazarus would then rise from the dead, as His 
conversation with the sisters showed. At the open 
tomb with the spectators standing by, He said: 
“Father, I thank thee that thou heardest me. And 
I knew that thou hearest me always: but because 
of the multitude that standeth around I said it, 
that they may believe that thou didst send me” 
(John xi, 41-42). Then He spoke the words which 
quickened the dead and restored him to his friends. 
Such a peculiar prayer! Not a petition in it from 
end to end! What did it mean? Simply this, 
that during those four days’ delay He had prayed 
the matter through and had received His Father’s 
reply. He came to Bethany to put into effect what 
God had already granted. 

This was not peculiar to the Redeemer. We see 
the same thing in Paul’s experience. While he 
was carrying on his work of evangelization in 
Corinth, tumults began to rage around him, and his 
own life and the lives of his supporters were endan- 
gered. But the Lord said to Paul in a vision: 
“ Be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace: 
for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to 
harm thee: for I have much people in this city”’ 
(Acts xviii, 9-10). Through all the insurrections 
which followed, he went on in the calm confidence 
that what God had promised His servant, He would 
fulfil, Similarly on shipboard, when the storm 
broke forth in fury and all on board gave up hope, 
the angel of the Lord stood by Paul and said: 
“Fear not, Paul; thou must stand before Cesar: 


4I 


THE PRAYER OF FAITH 


and lo, God hath granted thee all them that sail 
with thee.’ Then he added: ‘‘ Wherefore, sires, 
be of good cheer: for I believe God, that it shall be 
even so as it hath been spoken unto me ”’ (Acts xxvii, 
24-25). Then he proceeded, with a courage and 
resource that amazed even the toughened mariners 
of the Mediterranean, to take the practical steps 
necessary for giving effect to his faith. Paul 
had had wide experience in prayer and knew that 
when God signified his intention to answer a prayer, 
or to act in a given direction, he might rely implicitly 
on its fulfilment. 

This divine assurance directly given is one of | 
the features of the prayer life of our time. In 
one of his books, Charles G. Finney tells of an 
invalid of his acquaintance who had exceptional 
power in prayer. Toward the close of this man’s 
life, revivals had broken forth spontaneously in a 
number of places around his home and no one 
could discern any human instrumentality in their 
origin. After this man’s death, they found the 
record of his prayer activities. On a certain date 
there would be a note to this effect: “‘I have been 
enabled to-day to pray the prayer of faith for... 
I believe that God will soon pour out His Spirit 
upon it.”” At another date the same record of his 
hope for another community; and so on. By 
comparing the dates of the intercessions with the 
dates on which God’s power had been manifested 
in the places specified, they found that in each case 
the spiritual quickening had followed his believing 


42 


RIGHT REV. G. C. PIDGEON 


prayer. The very expression used is significant : 
‘“‘T have been enabled to pray the prayer of faith.” 
It was not a mere matter of his own choice. God 
was with him in his intercession. In that hour his 
soul had found the connection with the purposes 
of the eternal. As he had stretched out the hand 
of prayer for a particular community, God took it 
in a covenant of blessing. This exactly illustrates 
what we mean by the answer coming to every 
petition that is pressed home. The prayer should 
be persisted in until the soul touches God and 
obtains His response, and when He indicates His 
assent we know that what we ask we receive of Him. 

Many other examples might be given. A business 
man came down to his office as calm in spirit as a 
child after a member of his family had undergone 
a critical operation. He was asked if he had not 
been deeply anxious, and answered: “No, not 
a bit.” “‘ How is that possible? ’’ was the next 
question. “I prayed the matter through this 
morning,’ he said, “‘and received the assurance 
that all will be well. I have not a particle of doubt 
about the issue.’’ A young ministerial friend of 
mine was sent by a physician to tell a young mother 
that her recovery was impossible. When he began 
to speak to her about the great change apparently 
so near, her answer was that her time had not yet 
come. She believed that she was indispensable 
to her husband and children; she had prayed for 
restoration and God had answered her prayer. She 
was confident as to the outcome. And the issue 


43 


THE PRAYER OF FAITH 


was exactly as she expected. Now we must not 
infer that this must happen in every instance which 
seems similar. God deals with each case by itself. 
What is best for one may not be best for another, 
and we cannot see the difference. The point is 
that when we desire fervently any blessing, we may 
consult our Father about it and He will speak to 
our hearts in response assuring us what His love 
will do. 


The conclusion of the whole matter is this. You 
have a living God, “‘ Closer to you than breathing, 
and nearer than hands and feet” is the heart of 
your Father, full of the tenderest sympathy for 
his weak and needy child. If you are out of touch 
with Him, the fault is yours, not His. He longs 
for His child to live in Him heart to heart. If, 
therefore, you are bringing a request to Him, press 
your plea until love replies. Be assured that 
infinite love is not unconcerned. Whatever may 
be the cause of the answer delayed, or denied, 
it is not indifference. Keep on pleading until the 
mystic link which binds the soul to its Saviour is 
formed, and, whether the specific request is granted 
or not, you will have received the purest blessing 
which God can give. 


“More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice 
Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 
For what are men better than sheep, or goats, 


44 


RIGHT REV. G. C. PIDGEON 


That cherish a blind life within the brain, 

If, knowing God, they raise not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those who call them friends ? 
For so the whole round world is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”’ 


45 





Rev. Proressorn H. R. MACKINTOSH, D.Phil., D.D. 


THE CREV.IPROPESSOR, HH U GHOSE OSS 
MACKINTOSH, D.Phil., D.D. 


Proressor of Theology, New College, Edinburgh. 
Dr. Mackintosh is the second son of the Rev. 
Alexander Mackintosh, M.A., of Paisley. Educated 
at Tain Royal Academy and George Watson’s 
College, Edinburgh, he went up in 1888 to the 
University of Edinburgh, and in 1892 to New 
College for theology. In 1893 he was Ferguson 
Scholar in Philosophy. After brief ministries at 
Tayport and Aberdeen he was elected in 1904 to 
the chair which he now holds. Among his publi- 
cations are: ‘‘The Doctrine of the Person of 
Jesus Christ,” ‘‘ Immortality and the Future,”’ 
*‘The Divine Initiative,’ and ‘The Originality 
of the Christian Message.” 


SOLITUDE AND. FAITH 
Rev. Prorressor H. R. Macxintosu, D.D. 


“Immediately I conferred not with flesh and 
blood . . . but I went away into Arabia.”’ 
Galatians i, 16-17. 


Every student of St. Paul has lingered with curious 
interest over this brief note of time in his memories 
of conversion. He is giving a rapid summary of the 
chief points in the story of how he became a Chris- 
tian, mentioning nothing which is unimportant, 
and closing the narrative with an unwonted and 
emphatic gravity, in which as it were he puts him- 
self on oath. ‘‘ The things which I write unto you, 
behold, before God, I lie not.”” Every item in the 
series of events has a meaning. Every one con- 
tributed to make him what he was. And in a 
singular way this item fascinates a careful reader. 
“When it was the good pleasure of God,” so we 
may pick out the phrases, “to reveal His Son in 
me, immediately I conferred not with flesh and 
blood, but I went away into Arabia.”’ 

Here then between the cruel persecutor and the 
brave apostle lies this tract of solitude. The Spirit 
drove him out into the wilderness. There was 
no consultation with any human being; it was a 
time to commune, not with man, but with the 


ape 


SOLITUDE AND FAITH 


hills and with God. The spot was one hallowed 
in the great past. Here Moses had seen the burning 
bush, and spoken face to face with the Eternal. 
Here Elijah had roamed in his season of despair 
and drunk anew at the divine spring. And the 
man to whom Christ had spoken near Damascus 
and whose eyes were now wide open hastened away 
to the same region in which long before the prophets 
had wandered and thought and prayed. 

How long the Arabian sojourn lasted we cannot 
tell. Not less than a year, it would seem; perhaps 
even more. It occurs to us, as we read, that all 
the time a needy world was waiting for the re-. 
deeming message we associate with Paul’s name, 
yet he could afford to linger in the desert. It is 
just one more token (is it not?) that in God there 
is no haste. He moves slowly; He has all the 
time there is to ripen and fulfil His purpose. He 
will not rush the human spirit. Christ Himself, 
with a short life before Him, had reached the age 
of thirty when His public work began, and in two 
or three years more it was over. It seemed almost 
too long a preparation for the short measures of 
His earthly task. Not only so; after the baptism 
that equipped Him for the work He spent His 
forty days in the wilderness. So too the great 
apostle, in the crisis of his spirit, learnt patience 
by the delays that he suffered. There was a laying 
of the foundations deep in the solid rock. Surely 
it is worth while to mature silently in God’s presence 
until the hour for action strikes. Until the sound 


50 


REV. HUGH ROSS MACKINTOSH 


is heard and the man must rise up for his great 
task, he is left apart in that wilderness retreat. 
What he needs at that time is to be alone. Let 
us now try to see how in religion to be alone is 
at times a duty, and what the reward may be. 

(r) In the first place a man repents alone, for 
it is alone that he has sinned. All sin is a solitary 
business. When tempting thoughts come, when 
we smile upon them and make room for them, the 
very act cuts us off there and then from our fellows. 
It drops a barrage of smoke and gloom, and the 
blessed light of God is shut away. The loving look 
at evil drapes the soul in darkness. We are left 
in a deserted silence, and there we fight it out in 
the solitude we have chosen. How does the 
Evangelist picture the act of Judas after he rose 
from the supper-board with treachery in his heart ? 
“He went out immediately,” we read, ‘and it 
was night.”” That is what an evil purpose always 
means; like Judas, the man intent on sin goes 
out into the dark, and he goes alone. Then let 
the sin be done, and at once the isolation is in- 
tensified. As with the last light being quenched in 
a great building, there follows a darkness and a lone- 
liness that can be felt. No one who sins with open 
eyes but feels that thereby for the time being he is 
banishing himself from the company of God and man. 


“He that hath light within his own clear breast 
May walk in the centre and enjoy bright day : 
But he that hides a dark heart and foul thoughts 


wee 


SOLITUDE AND FAITH 


Benighted walks under the midday sun ; 
Himself is his own dungeon.”’ 


There is no way out of this prison-house except 
a penitence which is as lonely as the sin. It is 
useless to rush into the crowd and squander our- 
selves in company. The one method to make us 
fit for company again is to meet first with God 
and hear what He has to say to us. We must not 
shrink from that. Pains must be taken to effect it. 
“Thou, when thou prayest,’’ said Jesus, “enter 
into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, 
pray.”’ In the old mystic phrase, repentance can 
only be something between God and the soul, the 
soul and God. There can be no intermediary or 
onlooker in that solemn privacy, that waiting 
loneliness into which we can let ourselves by a 
firm act of will-power and by laying hold on God. 
Every man who has ever done a real act of penitence, 
who has looked up into the Face of wounded love 
and taken from the unseen hand the incredible gift 
of pardon, knows that in that well-remembered 
hour the Father and he were alone together, and 
that the voice he longed for would have been 
drowned and lost in the tumult of the ordinary 
crowded hurrying life. The will to face solitude 
makes part of the price of having our sins forgiven. 
So narrow is the path to the mercy-seat, and back 
again, that two cannot walk abreast. 

And thus the loneliness that drops down upon 
the sinner is one of God’s mercies after all. When 


52 


REV. HUGH ROSS MACKINTOSH 


a light suddenly goes out, we look round startled 
. by what is happening; we begin to think, and 
feel for something that will turn the light up again ; 
and just so the wretched isolation of guilt is God’s 
call to us and God’s opportunity. He sets us apart 
in misery in order that we may call upon Him. 
He puts us utterly by ourselves that we may become 
more sensitive to the hand that is touching us in 
the darkness, He shuts us in, that we may have 
no choice but to think of Him. The solitude speaks 
to us. We can hear what it is saying, and as we 
listen the message shapes itself into a promise: “‘ Thou 
hast destroyed thyself, but in Me is thine help.” 

(2) Again, we must be alone if we are to ratify 
the decisions of the soul. One foible of evangelical 
religion always has been to attach what is probably 
an undue importance to violent and abrupt choices 
—resolutions arrived at perhaps in the heat of an 
excited meeting or too closely imitated from a 
companion. This is not to say that for moral 
agents life must not always depend on choice. It 
is not even to deny that most great choices come 
suddenly, with a leap at the last, even though we 
may have had a long run before we leapt. But experi- 
ence if it proves anything proves this, that when 
the excitement dies away, each of these tremendous 
choices must be reviewed and must be ratified, if 
it is to exert a permanent influence on character. 
We must go over it again, we must look all round 
it, we must ask what it implies—for ourselves, 
possibly still more for others. Something tells us 


53 


SOLITUDE AND FAITH 


that without this it will leave us with only a dying 
ripple of emotion. We shall be weaker than ever 
just because of that upheaval of the inmost feeling 
that ended in itself. All the storm and tumult 
will have gone for nothing. So we must get away 
into the secret place and have it out with our own 
heart. We must know what we are doing. Our 
first task is to be alone with God. 

As the preacher is pleading with men to be recon- 
ciled to God; as here and there he catches sight 
of some listener with grave eager face, manifestly 
ready to consider and reflect and ponder, he knows 
perfectly that when he stops, when the appeal is 
over, one of two things certainly will happen. 
Either the new thought seen and received may be 
drowned out in floods of talk—innocent and de- 
lightful talk, even if untimely—either this, or it 
may be carried off for private quiet thought and 
will. There is no escape from quickened higher 
feeling to compare with what we call general con- 
versation. Even religious talk has often been like 
a cushion held up to ward off the thrust at con- 
science. But in point of fact what a man most 
needs who has caught an arresting or thrilling sight 
of Jesus is to be alone, and to be silent. An 
experience of that kind goes for nothing if we will 
not deal with it worthily. We need a mind at 
leisure from itself; an attitude in which the 
revelation can be pondered over till its full meaning 
breaks upon us and we realise what it is calling us 
to; that concentration of being upon questions 


54 


REV. HUGH ROSS MACKINTOSH 


of life and death, there in the secret place, that 
stirs and prepares the will for a decisive act. 
“While I was musing, the fire burned.”’ To gain 
that essential silence a man does not need to leave 
his work or go out of the world. He can have it 
as he walks down the street or sits for half an hour 
in his room. But somehow he must reach it, if 
he is ever to know how much God means for him ; 
he must gain the quiet and the solitude where 
only the mightier movement of things is heard— 
sin and judgment, Christ and vanity, life and death. 

Is it not just in this definite region that we shall 
find the reason of many a case of half-hearted 
faith? It is not that these souls have never seen 
Christ. It is not that their hopes have not gone 
after Him. Like others, they have had great 
moments of longing and prayer and dream. But 
they have let these things pass and made no later 
use of them. They have never gone away to 
be alone and make up their mind for God. They 
have known by sure instinct that it would be 
better for them to give Christ a chance with them 
in secret, but they have not made time for it. 
And so the impulse to faith has never reached 
persuasion. To take hold of your life and re-shape 
it for God is something that can only be done 
when you have deliberately shut the door and faced 
the case for Jesus in the quiet. 

Among the laws of the spiritual life none certainly 
is more sure than this, that the truth offered to 
us will become a living piece of life only as we look 


E aye) 


SOLITUDE AND FAITH 


at it steadily for more than the passing moment, 
and as in solitude we force our way to the heart of 
its meaning. We need to read the Divine message 
twice if we are to comprehend it. Most of us could 
take as our own the words of a character in one of 
Mark Rutherford’s books: ‘‘ The voice of God, to 
me at least, hardly ever comes in thunder, but I 
have to listen in perfect stillness to make it out,” 
It is what a man thinks of when he is alone, when 
his mind is awake and he is using it to some purpose, 
that makes him what he is to be. When the new 
idea of Christian discipleship comes to us, at first 
we see it very vaguely. Its developments, what 
it will lead to if we follow it out, we cannot see at 
all. It is all abstract and impalpable. It even 
bewilders and eludes us. So, if we are to clear 
up the situation, we must face ourselves, and face 
Christ too, in a time of privacy. Therefore, if you 
wish to make anything of the Christian life, insist 
on getting by yourself and thinking the matter out. 
You can do it if you wish to do it. Do not let 
yourself miss the best God has promised because 
you will not give it the second lingering thoughtful 
scrutiny that it needs if its greatness is to be 
understood and loved. 

(3) We must be alone that we may grasp the 
richness and depth of Christian truth. St. Paul 
had just been converted. What sent him into 
Arabia was that in consequence of meeting with 
Christ he had passed through a convulsion. A 
whole world of new ideas and emotions came pouring 
56 


REV. HUGH ROSS MACKINTOSH 


in upon him, and at first they overflowed and 
drowned his faculty of understanding. So he 
made for the desert. There he set himself to 
realise the meaning of this new possession, this 
tremendous discovery of truth and promise. Did 
he return from Arabia in the same confusion as 
he had felt in going? No; he came back with a 
great original message of salvation for all the world 
of needy lives, and never again, so far as his letters 
show, did he feel the faintest doubt that Christ 
is mighty to save. In those lonely valleys where 
long since the manna fell, in the shadow of peaks 
which had burned beneath the feet of Jehovah, 
the Gospel of Paul grew into shape and power. 
He came back with a view of God and Christ 
wrought in a living whole that more than once 
has turned the world upside down. 

In one sense the Gospel is simplicity itself. As 
Jesus felt, no one can understand it half so well 
as a child. To respond to the love of Christ, to 
feel through Him the very touch and breathing of 
the Father’s mercy—that is the daily experience 
of the simple-hearted, who enjoy God as the flower 
spreads itself beneath the sun. And yet the Gospel 
has its heights and depths of meaning. It stands 
for the last and highest truth that man will ever 
know. There are glorious thoughts in it—about 
God, and the Cross, and the destiny of man as 
redeemed by the Cross—which outgo all our powers 
of interpretation. And it is shame to Christian 
men not to be striving always to understand them 


ny 


SOLITUDE AND FAITH 


better. A recent writer on some cardinal elements 
of the Gospel speaks of “the demand they make 
for an enlargement of human faculty to take in the 
unimagined greatness newly revealed in them by 
God.” They are always beyond us, these vast 
truths of salvation, but unless we find quiet times 
to think about them, to familiarise ourselves with 
something of their richness, they will fade from 
our interest and perhaps leave us wondering why 
we ever thought them great. 

Do you think the majority of Christian people 
have adequately wakened up to the fact that they 
are called upon to worship God with their in- 
telligence? Have we realised that Christ is to be 
loved not with the heart only, but also with the 
mind? Here is science bravely and uninterruptedly 
prepared to spend time and brains to any extent 
on the inquiry into the structure of the physical 
world ; every new step towards the surprising of 
Nature’s secrets is greeted with a thrill of exalted 
gratitude. Are we not going to exert ourselves with 
equal keenness to interpret God, to take in the whole 
meaning of Jesus Christ? Surely we have to catch 
on our minds, not the lowest form of belief compatible 
with a profession of Christianity, but something of 
the incredible wonder of Him who has ransomed us 
with His blood. But to do that, in any sense that 
goes deep, a man must be alone, and he must try 
with all his might to reach and master what is true. 

How do men make advance in other fields? By 
brooding over the subject-matter till gradually thenew 


58 


REV. HUGH ROSS MACKINTOSH 


paths of knowledge open out before the kindling mind. 
Is not that Wordsworth’s secret; is it not in that 
way he learnt and then taught to his generation— 


“ The silence that is in the starry sky, 
The sleep that is among the lonely hills ’”’ ? 


And we too must be sometimes alone if we are 
ever to brood over the Gospel that has saved us— 
to think about it so often and so intensely that it 
constantly reveals new depths and offers new gifts. 
That is the protection against poor and thin con- 
victions. Men and women, whatever we know of 
Christ, so that we could stand for it as part of 
our very being, is it not the fact that we have 
toiled for and made it our own in private and 
sustained reflection? We have gone aside, and 
had it out with the fact of Christ and our own mind. 
We have given the truth of Calvary a chance to sink 
into us and colour the very fibre of our thought 
and feeling. There is no other way of getting such 
a grip upon the Unseen as will empower a man to 
make a convincing appeal for faith to his thoughtful 
contemporaries. It is not by lending half an ear 
for half an hour to the meaning of God in Christ 
that we become capable of doing the best service 
anyone can do his generation—which is done not 
by getting up into a pulpit and preaching but by 
a man so occupying thought and mind with 
God’s message through the Saviour that, at any 
time kindness calls upon him for it, he can state 
warmly and wisely to the friend by his side 


29 


SOLITUDE AND FAITH 


who Christ is and what He can do for man. 

There is no exaggeration, I think, in saying that 
one of the sore needs of modern religion is a serious 
mental grasp of the Gospel of God, the great 
Christian ideas. We cannot meditate without 
being alone, and meditation is in danger of be- 
coming a lost art. The world is so much with 
us that we have too little explored the treasures of 
love and holy power stored for us in Jesus. Hence 
we get panic-stricken over the last scientific objec- 
tion to prayer, or the latest rumour that Jesus 
Christ never lived. There is a better way by far. 
Everyone who longs to do it can put aside the claim 
of smaller things and stand alone for a brief space 
each day in the presence of the Father. All can 
have a little chapel, with an ever-burning light, 
where they look upon God’s face, and regale the 
thirsty heart from springs of truth. 

But the great end of seclusion is that we may 
be prepared to leave it again. St. Paul did not 
spend his life in Arabia; he but made ready there 
for the larger task. It is when we have seen the 
vision, gazing long enough to catch its lesson, that 
we have something precious and real to give to 
those who in need knock at our door. It is as we 
look and look again at what God has revealed that the 
heart overflows for those without. We are sent back 
to life, simplified, cleansed, refreshed, with a true word 
of hope and courage for other men. There is no 
greater happiness than this. May none of us go 
through life so poor as never to have known that joy. 
60 


THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 
Tue Rt. Rev F. THEODORE WOODS, D.D. 


THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 
(The Rt. Rev. Frank Theodore Woods, D.D.) 


Ex-officio Prelate of the Order of the Garter; Hon. 
D.D. (Camb. 1916, Edin. Univ. 1922). Son of the 
Rev. Frank Woods and of Alice Fry, daughter of 
Joseph Fry, who was the youngest son of Elizabeth 
Fry, the well-known philanthropist. He was edu- 
cated at Marlborough College, and Trinity College, 
Cambridge; and ordained in 1897. After holding 
cures in South London and in Manchester, he 
became successively Vicar and Rural Dean of 
Bishop Auckland, and subsequently of Bradford. 
Bishop of Peterborough, 1916-24: he was trans- 
lated to Winchester, 1924. Select preacher at 
Cambridge 1917 and 1920, and at Oxford, 1918-19. 
He accompanied the Archbishop of Canterbury to 
the General Assemblies of the Church of England 
and of the United Free Churches of Scotland to 
bring to their notice the Lambeth Appeal for 
Reunion, 1921. Publications: ‘‘ Lambeth and 
Reunion ’”’ (joint author with the Bishops of 
Hereford and of Zanzibar), ‘‘ Interpreters of God,”’ 
““The Great Fellowship,” ‘‘ Great Tasks and 
Inspirations.” 


THE CREED IN THOUGHT 
AND ACTION 


Tue Lorp Bisoop or WINCHESTER 


“ Behold, I thought... now I know,’’* 
II Kings v, 11 and 15. 


I AM not concerned with Naaman, but these two 
expressions of Naaman’s experience represent pre- 
cisely the difference which the Nicene belief has 
made. ‘ Behold, I thought ...”: that was the 
religious world before Jesus had unveiled God. 
“Now I know”’: that was the verdict of the Church 
as formulated at Nicza. Before Nicza each Church 
had its own baptismal creed, very similar, no doubt, 
they were, but there was no universal creed. Nicxa 
marks the final settlement of Christian conviction 
about the person of Christ. Not that the discussion 
is closed ; for all we know the Church may still be in 
its infancy. God has much new light in store for 
us, but it is inconceivable that so long as the Catholic 
Church exists there could be any revision of this 
central dogma. Instinctively the men who gathered 
in the city of victory realised that their decision was 
vital, and history has confirmed their instinct. In 
the words of a wise man, “If once the thinnest of 


* Commemioration of Nicw#a, Winchester Cathedral, October 
14th, 1925. 
63 


THE CREED IN THOUGHT AND ACTION 


thin ends of a wedge is driven between God and 
Christ, if once the equation, so to speak, is tampered 
with, the Supreme Creator and Ruler drifts away 
and becomes a cold abstraction, and Christ figures 
as a heroic rebel, perfect in goodness, but not perfect 
in power.’* For if Christ is not God, then we are 
condemned to a terrible uncertainty. 

However true it may be that the world’s best 
ideals were embodied in that life from the Manger 
to the Cross, yet in that case they were not counter- 
signed by God. “Behold, I thought ” that in that 
life there might be a perfect reflection of God, but I 
did not know; I thought that the values of that 
character were the eternal values, but I did not 
know; I thought that the issue of that life was 
the guarantee of immortality, but I did not know. 
Once detach Christ from God and the whole great 
glory of faith, hope and love becomes vague, misty, 
nebulous. What one thought was solid rock is 
discovered to be after all but shifting sand. 

We are by this time, I hope, rid of the notion 
that the Nicene Faith grew up gradually in the 
years which intervened between Christ’s life and 
the assembling of the Council. Some have not 
scrupled to assert that it was a development, and 
an unauthorised development at that, of the simpler 
faith of the men who personally knew Jesus as 
friend and master. The fatal obstacle to this idea, 
superficially attractive as it may be, is the witness 
of St. Paul. For here we have a contemporary of 

*D.C. Somervell: ‘A Short History of our Religion,’’ p. 121. 


4 


THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 


Christ who was familiar with those who had followed 
the Master through all the stages of His earthly 
ministry, who felt the full force of Jewish horror 
at the notion of a crucified Messiah, and yet who 
made the Godhead of that crucified leader the very 
touchstone of his gospel. To suppose that St. Paul’s 
doctrine of Christ was his own invention or was 
superadded by him to a simple faith is to fly 
in the face of the history of those early days. 
There were circles in the Church, and particularly in 
Jerusalem, in which St. Paul was far from popular, 
and in which his creed was vehemently criticised. 
But no faintest breath of criticism was ever raised 
against his doctrine of the person of Christ. Even 
if by some kind of critical gymnastic you can elim- 
inate the Nicene Faith from the first three Gospels 
you have to face two men who in this respect will 
give you no quarter, and whose witness remains 
unshaken and unshakable: one is Saul of Tarsus, 
and the other is John the son of Zebedee. What 
a scene it must have been, the scene at that victory 
Council! Heathenism was anything but dead. To 
realise that one need but look around on these 
scarred and mutilated veterans scattered through 
the hall. Yet the day of persecution was over, at 
least for the time being. The Catholic Church— 
that contemptible little army—had fought its 
battle and won its standing, but greater conflicts 
were in store. Faced it was immediately by the 
undisciplined hordes of the north, and ultimately 
by that whole great world, medieval and modern, 

05 


THE CREED IN THOUGHT AND ACTION 


with its thousand controversies, its endless currents 
of opinion and speculations, upon which we look 
back, and by which in large measure we are still 
surrounded. But it was armed now for all time 
with the armour which no shaft has pierced, the 
armour which, Sunday by Sunday, we wrap around 
us: “‘ We believe in God, and in one Lord Jesus 
Christ, the only begotten Son of God, Begotten of 
His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of 
Light, Very God of very God, Begotten not made, 
Being of one substance with the Father... by 
whom all things were made.” When we think of 
the millions who have been compelled to be content 
with hopeful guesses at the truth—‘‘ Behold, I 
thought ’’—we may be thankful indeed for the 
conviction which answers all doubts, which trans- 
forms character, which throws open the gates of 
heaven, which, like a mighty flash lights up the 
whole great panorama—“ Now I know!” 

Brothers, we are assembled as trustees for this, 
the greatest conviction about God and man that the 
world has ever reached. We glory in the fact that 
it was not reached, it never could have been reached ; 
it was given. Humbly and with profoundest 
adoration we receive it. But such a gift carries with 
it a fearful responsibility. “‘ We believe”; but 
what is involved in that Creed ? What do we know ? 
What must we do? 


66 


THE EORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 


§ 


We know, in the first place, that the greatest 
thing in the world is personality. The doctrine of 
the person of Christ involves the doctrine of the 
person of man. “‘ Who for us men and for our 
salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate 

. and was made man.” If that is true, then 
the worth of man, that is, of man’s personality, is 
immeasurable, If human personality was the chosen 
frame for the perfect picture of God, then no words 
can describe what man is and what man can be. 
In the deepest and truest sense this was God’s news, 
God’s-spell. Such knowledge was too high for the 
ancients. They could not attain to it. Aristotle 
thought some men were born to be savages, and 
others destined to be slaves, and ‘‘ women, appar- 
ently in all seriousness, as nature’s failures in the 
attempt to produce men.’’* And indeed there have 
been modern philosophies just as_ pessimistic. 
According to some modern teachers the interest has 
so shifted from the individual to the universal that 
personality recedes into the dim distance. But 
with Nicza before us we know that the world— 
may we not say, indeed, the universe—was created 
for personality. And we know more still, much more : 
we know that it is possible for man’s personality 
to be linked with God’s. This was the fundamental 
experience of the early Church. They could say 
with St. Paul: ‘I live, yet not I but Christ liveth 

*J.R. Illingworth ; ‘‘ Personality, Human and Divine,” p. 7. 

67 


THE CREED IN THOUGHT AND ACTION 


in me.” It is by this that personality in all races 
and under all circumstances has been revalued. 
Man in Christ is not only of infinite worth for what 
he is, but of infinite worth for what he may become. 
We, of the Church, must lay this to heart as we 
think of the men and women of alien races, the 
multitudes of India, the natives of Africa. From 
the point of view of London or Paris or New York, 
they may be looked upon, if not with fear and 
suspicion, with, at least, a certain calm superiority. 
From the point of view of Nicea they must be 
treated with scrupulous respect. Their manhood 
and womanhood shines forth in the light of Him 
who, in the mighty words of Athanasius, “ was 
made man that we might be made God.” Many 
Christians say the Nicene Creed; not too many 
have learnt its values. For if life is in itself worth 
living, life in Christ is more worth living than any 
poor human words can describe. To fail to realise 
that is to drop below the level of the great Creed 
that we say. And even when we do realise it, the 
contrast with our own character and output is 
sufficiently humiliating. As Chesterton says, man 
was to be haughtier than he had ever been before, 
but he was to be humbler than he had ever been 
before. ‘‘In so far as I am Man I am the chief of 
creatures ; in so far as 1 am a man [ am the chief of 
sinners.’’ Christianity, as he says, combines these 
furious opposites. ‘“‘ The Church was positive on 
both points. One can hardly think too little of 
one’s self. One can hardly think too much of one’s 
68 


THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 


soul.”’* Therefore it is, brothers, that the man who 
dares to say the Nicene Creed should be first humble, 
lowly, and penitent ; but he should also be buoyant, 
radiating, effective. He knows what God thinks of 
him: he knows what God did for him: he holds 
a faith, which lifts him over all circumstances and 
gives him victory over all temptations; he is one 
who has indeed discovered the secret of life. 

It follows that, if this is what I would venture 
to call normal life in the Nicene Faith, then the 
propagation of that faith becomes not merely an 
overwhelming necessity, but an irresistible enter- 
prise. We need in these days this note of exhilaration 
in our preaching, not an exhilaration purchased at 
the expense of reality, but the exhilaration which 
faces facts, the facts of wrong and evil, within and 
without, fairly and squarely. For surmounting 
them is a still greater fact, the fact of Him who “ for 
us men and for our salvation came down from 
heaven.” That is the incredible wonder of history. 
That is the indescribable attraction of Jesus. It 
has meant—it means—the reconstruction of person- 
ality. Even Arianism with its utterly defective 
doctrine of Christ did a noble work of missions and 
was a power of life among the northern nations. 
If that was so, then @ forvitovt the true doctrine 
must be more potent still. It has been so and it is so. 
I trust that this Diocese, saying its Creed through 
your lips to-day, will more than ever sound this 
evangelistic note in all its activities, for on this 

* G. K, Chesterton: ‘‘ Orthodoxy.” 


69 


THE CREED IN THOUGHT AND ACTION 


good news of personality all our work is built. We 
gather the children in the schools, the men in their 
various fellowships, the women in their Mothers’ 
Union, the girls in their G.F.S. and their Guides, the 
lads in their Brigade and in their Scouts, all because 
of the fact, incessantly fresh, that God has thought 
of them, that God has planned for them, that God 
loves them, that God has great things in store for 
them ; in a word, that He who “ for us men and for 
our salvation came down from heaven ’’ has noticed 
them, and that in that Divine notice the doors of a 
new world have been thrown open for them, a world of 
growth, development, usefulness, service, perfection, 
which, but for the Godhead of Jesus, would have been 
unthinkable. “‘ What is the news ?”’ said Tennyson 
to his landlady as he greeted her one morning. 
“Why, sir,” she said, “there is only one piece of 
news that I know of, that Christ came into the 
world to save sinners, and that is old news, and 
good news, and new news.” Aye, so it is. Then 
preach it up and down we must if we are to be 
worthy of this faith ! 


N 


In the second place, holding this faith, we know 
that the Christian values of character bear the hall- 
mark of God. The qualities of Christ’s character, 
that is, are the qualities of eternal life. In so far as 
through the Holy Spirit we can gain them, we live: 


70 


THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 


to be without them is death. They are summed up 
in the immortal Beatitudes of the Sermon on the 
Mount. They are writ large in the daily life of 
Jesus as we watch Him in the Gospels. Is this 
ideal a mere chimera—a veritable Everest, distantly 
beautiful, but impracticable and unattainable? In 
the view of many, both ancients and moderns, the 
answer to that is in the affirmative. Some would 
go further and decry it as not merely impracticable 
but unnecessary and unwise. Every age has had 
its ideals of character. The Stoic aimed at living as 
nature directs, and sought to eliminate passions and 
emotions in a way which, however heroic it might have 
seemed, was doomed tofailure. The tariff he provided 
at life’s table was fine but ineffective. More attrac- 
tive superficially, at least, was the tariff of Epicurus 
and his followers—“‘ the philosophy of the pigsty,” 
as its enemies called it. Happiness is the end of 
life, he said. Not less divergent in their estimates 
are many of our day. Morals, said Nietzsche, 
depend on the geographical and historical conditions 
of a people. Every conception changes with time. 
... ‘Values did man only assign to things in 
order to maintain himself. Good and evil, which 
would be everlasting, it doth not exist. All is in 
flux. Everything good is the evil of yore which 
has been rendered serviceable.” 

And the man in the street is ready with nis es- 
timate, which, broadly speaking may be summed up 
in the conventional phrase: ‘‘ Everyone for him- 
self, and the weakest must go to the wall.” Yet 

F 71 


THE CREED IN THOUGHT AND ACTION 


it is not so easy to say precisely what the ideals of 
the man in the street are in these days. The pres- 
sure of material estimates of life is fearfully strong, 
and yet the spiritual crops up in unexpected places. 
Many are leaving their old ideals, but it is difficult 
to describe the new ones, and in many cases they 
hardly know. themselves. Many would line up 
beside one of the characters in Mr. Wells’ latest 
book who, thinking over things, realises that 


“he had been one of the vast multitude of those 
who had come out of the war in the expectation 
of a trite and obvious old-fashioned millennium, 
and who expressed their disappointment by 
declaring that nothing had happened except 
devastation and impoverishment. ‘They were too 
jaded at first to observe anything else. But 
indeed he now realised that the European world 
had been travelling faster and faster since the 
break-up of the armed peace of 1914; and here 
were new types, new habits of thought, new 
ideas, new reactions, new morals, new ways of 
living. He discovered himself in the advent of 
a new age, a new age that was coming so fast 
that there hadn’t been time ever to clear the 
forms and institutions of the old age away. They 
weren’t reversed or overthrown, they were just 
disregarded.’’* 


In so far as the forms and institutions are merely 
*H, G. Wells: ‘Christina Alberta’s Father.” 
72 


THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 


conventional they may indeed be disregarded. 
But there are certain fundamentals which even the 
modern man will disregard at his peril, and chief 
among them is the standard endorsed by Christ, 
and therefore bearing the counter-signature of 
God. And here the Nicene faith is vital, for it may 
be said with certainty that any repudiation of the 
Christian ideal of conduct is always in closest con- 
nection with the repudiation of the Nicene doctrine 
on which it is founded. Given the Creed, the conduct 
follows. If it does not, the Creed is not sincerely 
held. Repudiate the Creed, and the conduct, though 
it may linger on like the warmth of a summer day 
when the sun has gone down, must ultimately give 
way. The fact is that if we of the Church wish to 
make the Creed believable, we must commend it 
by that which the world can see, namely, the conduct 
which follows from it. Dr. Burn has reminded us 
of a beautiful phrase in the Creed of Caesarea, which 
most unfortunately dropped out in its revision, and 
in which our Lord is spoken of as one who “ lived as 
a citizen amongst men.” The strongest buttress of 
the Creed of Niczea is the men and women who in 
this twentieth century exhibit as citizens amongst 
men the ideals which Christ proclaimed, and manifest 
those qualities of eternal life. It is not enough to 
say “who for us men and for our salvation came 
down ... was incarnate . . . was crucified, dead, 
and buried.” The question is, how far is His Body 
the Church prepared to do likewise, prepared to 
come down in thought and sympathy and suffering 


73 


THE CREED IN THOUGHT AND ACTION 


on to the level of the world of its own day, penetrating 
with the unconquerable love of its Master into the 
dark places of sin and sorrow, and seeking, in some 
sense as He did, to bear the sins of the world. Thank 
God! the Church is not without this witness. 
It is not long since I was worshipping with some 
Sisters at Bournemouth in company with a hundred 
of Christ’s children, orphans and friendless, for 
whose souls and characters these women give their 
lives. It is not long since I shared a frugal meal 
with brothers in the Oxford House at Calcutta, 
men who have given and are giving everything that 
they possess of learning, knowledge, and love, for 
the leavening of the young student life in that great 
centre. Indeed, the great process is around us on 
every hand; up and down the country, up and 
down the Diocese, men and women, clergy and 
laity represent in ways which compel the attention, 
this loving, sympathising, healing Jesus. 

Indeed, when we think of the army of men and 
women, whether enrolled in some great comradeship 
like the Church Army, or in the still more far- 
reaching comradeships of the day schools and the 
Sunday Schools, we thankfully recognise that there 
is that to-day in Christ’s Church and in this Mother 
Church of ours which in some humble way corre- 
sponds to the mighty Creed. 

But we have yet to learn. Scores of thousands 
of our people hardly know the meaning of sacrifice, 
have even hardly learnt to give. If they had, the 
story of the Central Fund of the Church would be 


74 


THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 


very different. If they had, such enterprises as the 
one which is in our minds and on our hearts in this 
Diocese would not detain uslong. It is time, surely, 
that our people, and in particular the young people, 
the young men and women of the Church, should 
think more seriously of the tremendous implication 
of the Creed which they profess. The Society to 
which they belong and which is the trustee of this 
faith, is crying aloud for the service which they can 
give. We want the men in the ministry. There 
are a thousand posts full of scope and promise at 
home and abroad for which we want women. We 
want men and women of every class, not least, those 
of birth, education, and capacity, for the great 
campaign. Where shall we find them? They 
seem so long in coming, yet by the thousand they 
confess God in Christ, by the thousand they bow 
their heads—perhaps they even kneel—at the 
“ et incarnatus est.” But is that the real attitude 
of their souls? He would become incarnate in 
them; in them He would carry on the work of our 
salvation; through them He would reach out to 
men and women who, here at home and there abroad, 
so sorely need Him; in their characters He would 
exhibit the perfect ideal of conduct ; through them 
He would prove to the world that the Christian 
ethic, so far from being unattainable, can be repro- 
duced in daily life through the supernatural grace 
which He can give. After the Creed, the Offertory. 
Liturgically, yes! But actually—-is it so? 

My friends, I would have you realise the 


75 


THE CREED IN THOUGHT AND ACTION 


tremendous obligation to personal conduct which 
rests upon all who say this Creed. It excludes that 
slovenly, easy-going worldliness with which so much 
of our so-called Church life is tainted. There was 
something in it challenging, menacing, breathing 
defiance. It was meant deliberately to exclude 
those whose faith was wrong, and, therefore, by 
implication, it excludes all those who have no 
intention of fitting their conduct into such a frame. 
To stand and say that Creed is to resolve humbly 
but definitely to exhibit in one’s own character a 
conduct which naturally follows. 


‘“We want a creed which shall be so strong in 
its assertion of principle and moral duty that it 
shall arrest and convict those who do not mean 
to stand definitely on the side of right. A 
creed which shall stress belief in love, forgive- 
ness, atonement, sacrifice, honesty, simplicity, 
courage, ’’* 


And we have it. For the creed which stresses the 
facts of the Christ stresses the conduct which corre- 
sponds, Even now, and even then, a lurking 
scepticism tries to lift its ugly head. Is it really 
true that this ideal of discipline, service and sacrifice 
is what really matters? In every book we open, 
in every paper we read, placarded in every business 
house, the spirit of the world breathes out its scented 
enticements. We are almost hypnotised. Is it true 
* The Rev. Harold Anson. 


76 


THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 


that that lad who is making a stand for honesty 
in his work, that girl who is making a stand for 
purity in her life, that business man who is so 
particular about the absolute rectitude of his 
dealings, that poor woman who would rather starve 
than that the children should go uncared for, and 
uninstructed in the things of God—is it true that 
these are pursuing an ideal too good for this world, 
that they are putting a value upon life which, 
however heroic, can never answer? And indeed 
this scepticism strikes at the very heart of our 
Church life: is it really worth while, this discipline, 
this attempt to make contact with God in worship 
and in prayer, this resolve to live a regulated life, 
this denial of self which hurts us desperately and 
which seems to achieve so little. Is it all worth 
while? Had we not better come back to the 
ordinary valuation, be content with the conventional 
ideal, walk at a more reasonable pace? Then, 
just as we seem to be carried off our feet with this 
tide of worldliness, just as this germ of unbelief 
begins to infect our souls, we wake up, we find 
ourselves standing in the holy place; the thunder 
of the Creed is upon us. ‘“ Who for us men and 
for our salvation came down from heaven.” Is 
that true? Down come the world’s valuations, 
clattering like a child’s house of bricks, and there, 
wonderful, austere, yet eternally satisfying, is 
Christ’s own standard. It is ours. From this time 
forth it shall more than ever be ours, and it will 
conquer: for Nicea is the city of victory, and in 


77 


THE CREED IN THOUGHT AND ACTION 


all that that great name connotes the ideal shall be 
attained. By this sign we shall conquer. 


§ 


Once more, the third great certainty of Nicea is 
summed up in the immortal sentence “ God is Love.” 
For, if that Creed is true, then at the very heart of 
Divinity is love, love radiating between the three 
wondrous Persons. Behold, we thought. In the 
War when faith was weak and fierce questionings 
were abundant, we thought; now we know. We 
knew all the time, but we are weak and we like to 
be reassured. If, indeed, it was God who lay in that 
Manger and who died on that Cross, then we are 
triumphantly positive that at the centre of things 
is love, and not only so, but positive that love is the 
final solution of. every problem, that there is no 
situation in which love cannot be used in its fulness Z 
that, as a wise man once said, love is perhaps the 
only thing that can never be excluded by circum- 
stance. In that Creed the three Persons shine on 
one another and on us. We believe in God, in 
Jesus Christ, in the Holy Ghost the Lord and Giver 
of life. But that unity demands its reflection in 
the unity of the Church, and finally in the unity 
of humanity. I believe in one Catholic and Apos- 
tolic Church. That is a tremendous affirmation. 

Men are searching for that unity in these days 
with a new zest, and we of the Nicene Faith are 


78 


THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 


not the only people who are out to supply it. In 
far off days the Catholic Church in North Africa was 
overwhelmed by a fiercer and more ardent faith. 
To-day that same faith, the faith of Mahomet, is 
offering a brotherhood to depressed races, which, 
in some parts of Africa at least, surpasses that which 
is offered by the Christian Church. We hear rather 
alarmingly of secessions from the Church to 
Mahomedanism solely on this ground. It is reported 
from one province at least that hundreds of coloured 
people have left the Church in recent years for this 
reason. It is not the faith which is inadequate, 
but the presentation of it. Even here at home 
many of our people seem most inadequately to 
realise or to exhibit the warmth and zest of the 
brotherhood which their faith implies. Yet in this 
faith only lies hope of unity in the world, in this 
faith only lies hope of unity in Christendom. 
Whatever else has resulted from the Appeal of the 
Lambeth Conference and the conversations which 
have been carried on since, there is at least complete 
unity in the acknowledgement of “the Creed, 
commonly called Nicene, as a sufficient statement 
of the Christian faith.” Only in this faith can we be 
effectively drawn together. As Dr. Sanday said: 
““The experience of more than eighteen centuries 
affords the very strongest presumption that nothing 
short of the Catholic doctrine will ever permanently 
satisfy the wants of Christian women and Christian 
men.” 
Conference after conference has explicitly or 


79 


THE CREED IN THOUGHT AND ACTION 


implicitly affirmed this fact. It may be true that 
‘‘of conferences there is no end, and much dis- 
cussion is a weariness to the flesh.”” There may be 
those who sympathise with the pathetic complaint 
of Gregory of Nazianzus: “Of no synod have I 
seen a profitable end: rather an addition to than a 
diminution of evils. For a love of strife and a thirst 
for superiority are beyond the power of words to 
express.” I fear that to some extent that was true 
of Nicea; but when we think of Lambeth, or of 
Faith and Order, or of Stockholm, or of the Church 
Congress, we realise the potent attractiveness of this 
mighty faith, and we affirm our conviction of its 
complete capacity to draw together the scattered 
units of the Church. For if God is love, then among 
God’s people love must have its way. 

My friends, the fact is that this faith is so unutter- 
ably satisfying, positive, aggressive, that we must 
go forth to the world, exuberant and enthusiastic 
not merely to defend it, but to carry it into 
every corner of our life, social and _ personal 
alike. There is no room here for shyness or re- 
ticence. If the complaint be true from the in- 
tellectual point of view that we are on the road 
to producing a race of men too mentally modest to 
believe in the multiplication table, there is no call 
for such modesty here. There is, on the contrary, 
every call for an aggressiveness of love which shall be 
worthy of the terrific facts which, in saying the 
Creed, we dare to take upon our lips. We are faced 
with problems at home and abroad, Ours it is 
80 


THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 


to make trial of the faith more deeply, more 
extensively; ‘‘experience will decide,’ and then to 
spread it, to advocate it at every opportunity, 
to advertise it up and down in our conduct and 
character. ‘‘ Behold,I thought. .. . NowI know.” 
Then, knowing, go forth and proclaim it. Brothers, 
we are here for a solemn act of worship. We dedicate 
this generation of our great and ancient Diocese to 
the service of the Most High. We praise God for 
the infinite mercy of a faith so glorious. To this 
faith we owe this temple: century after century 
it has been recited here: generation after generation 
of worshippers within these walls have lived and 
died in its light and strength. To this faith we 
consecrate ourselves. In this faith we shall conquer. 


SI 





Rev. P. N. WAGGETT, 5.58.J.E., D.D. 


THE REV. PHILIP NAPIER WAGGETT, 
S.S.J.Ei, D:D, 


Tue REV. Puitip NAPIER WAGGETT is the second 
son of John Waggett and Florence Blechynden 
Waggett. He was educated at Charterhouse and 
Christ Church, Oxford. Interested first in Classics 
and then in Biological Science, in which he took a 
First Class at Oxford. M.A. Oxford and Cam- 
bridge (Trinity College). In the early days of 
school and college missions he was at the Christ 
Church Mission in Poplar, and later at the Charter- 
house Mission in Southwark, and he is now at the 
latter Mission. In the interval, as a Priest of the 
Society of St. John the Evangelist, he has lived 
in South Africa, America, Oxford, Cambridge, 
and Westminster. During the War he was first 
a Chaplain in France, 1914-1917, being twice 
mentioned in Despatches, and later engaged as a 
Political Officer on the Headquarters’ Staff in 
Palestine; residing at Jerusalem and visiting 
Damascus, Beirut and other places in Syria. He 
contributed to the Cambridge University Cen- 
tenary Volume on Darwin; and to Hastings’ 
Dictionary of Ethics (Art. Heredity). He went 
to India on the Mission of Help, and was most of 
last year at the General Theological Seminary of 
the Episcopal Church of America, New York. 
Select Preacher at Oxford and at Cambridge. 
Among his writings are: ‘‘ Science and Religion,” 
“The Scientific Temper in Religion,” ‘‘ Knowledge 
and Virtue ’’ (Hulsean Lectures) (the Clarendon 
Press), “‘ The Industry of Faith,’’ and papers in the 
Aristolian Society, and the (late) Synthetic 
Society. He is a Proctor in Convocation for the 
Clergy of the Diocese of Oxford. 


THE EUCHARIST AS SACRIFICE* 
Rev. P. N. Waccerr, D.D. 


“Flee from idolatry. The things which the 
Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and 
not to God: and I would not that ye should have 
communion with demons.... Ye cannot be 
partakers of the Lord’s Table and of the table of 
demons.” 1 Corinthians x, I4, 20, 21. 


THE passage these words belong to is one in which 
the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice is taught 
in a way peculiarly impressive. It is taught us 
because it is assumed as known by the first hearers 
of the Epistle, and because it is made for them the 
foundation of a practical lesson. We shall presently 
see that the Apostle’s lesson falls to pieces unless 
the sacrificial character of the Eucharist in some 
sense is assumed. But we have some steps to 
take before arriving at this consideration. 

In our first Conference, excluding for a time the 
succours of faith and love, we place ourselves, for 
the purpose of a passionless reflexion, in a plane 
lighted only by history, and by such information 
as is open to all, believers and unbelievers alike. We 
considered the Holy Eucharist as it is an external 
fact, observable in the public history of mankind. 


* This Address belongs to a Course given at All Saints, 
Margaret Street. 


85 


THE EUCHARIST AS SACRIFICE 


In that history it stands, an institution plainly 
influential, because plainly effective. It has in 
point of fact absorbed the attention of the nations, 
and its appearance is in fact succeeded first by 
the neglect, and soon by the abolition, of sacrificial _ 
worship once famous and frequented. ‘ 

We agreed, further, that the simplicity and 
all-but poverty of our ceremonies in their essence 
affords a proof of the power of God shown in them, 
or at least an occasion for faith in the power seen 
in results rather than heralded by our preparations. 
The reproach that our Sacraments are natural and 
even common in their material, leaves us untouched. 
It would be more difficult to meet the plea, if it 
could justly be made, that our worship owes its 
influence to the use of every resource of art, 
splendour, science and psychological magic. At 
least in the earlier ages of our faith, the splendours, 
the apparatus, were on the other side. 

The Emperor of the world, bathed in the blood 
of bulls, endeavoured in vain to reanimate his own 
world’s dying attention to a dying religion. Mean- 
while men were drawn to an altar where there was 
nothing seen that might not be seen in every house. 
For all that could be seen was that simple men 
broke bread and ate of it in common, that they 
mixed a cup and shared it among themselves, 

But, we said, in those simple acts was found both 
the refreshment of men’s souls, and the satisfaction 
of their incurable desire to offer sacrifice to 
Almighty God. 

86 


REV. PHILIP NAPIER WAGGETT 


And now we leave the ground where we receive 
only the light of common day, and ask what is 
the true nature of this observance. The event we 
can point to in the world; what is the open secret 
of its influence ? 


I 


The Holy Eucharist is not merely an event in 
the world. It is that and more. It is an event in 
the Church. With respect to its inward, unseen, 
spiritual and efficient part, it is not in the order of 
nature, nor even an interruption of the order of 
nature. It is not a work of power like a storm or 
a mountain, nor is it a miracle breaking through 
the course of the world, like the storied cleaving 
of the Red Sea. It is neither product of nature 
nor miracle in nature. It is an event, a reality, 
existing wholly in the Spirit-bearing body of Christ, 
in that covenanted and consecrated assembly of 
His members which is both the expression and the 
organ of His unseen power. 

Even Christians cannot too steadily regard this 
truth, cannot too often repeat and enforce it. The 
very victory of Christ in the Eucharist tends to 
make our weakness suppose that this mystery has 
left the special sphere of His fellowship, and 
emerged into the unbelieving world. And because 
our central mystery is indeed om zs visible side, a 
fact and a spectacle of the visible world, we are 

G 87 


THE EUCHARIST AS SACRIFICE 


apt to forget that what is visible may also be 
spiritual, and that our Eucharist, visible and 
invisible, belongs as such entirely to the sphere of 
covenant, and has its reality only in the Church. 
Yes, it is a mystery within the Spirit-bearing Body 
of Christ. Many of the questions which once vexed 
Christian piety—such questions as, what would 
happen to the inward part of the Sacrament in 
certain accidents that we cannot bear to speak of— 
supposing, for example, the Sacrament was stolen 
by the heathen—have really no substance. The 
Sacrament has its being in the sphere of covenant. 
Reserve to-day the corresponding truth that the 
Sacrament belongs to the spiritual life of the soul. 
Believe and affirm to-day that it belongs to the 
life of the Church; and has its being only there. 
This does not mean that it has no being, and 
belongs to the world that is no world, the world 
of notion and fancy, or to the artificial constancy 
of convention. No, it belongs to the true and real 
life, visible and invisible, of that Body which 
Christ, God and Man, both creates and welcomes, 
to that form of social existence, at last actual and 
permanent, in which the descendants of Adam, 
alive in the new man, become children of God. 
In human measures, the Eucharist is an affair 
between Christians, and the non-Christian cannot 
intrude upon it. In the judgment of Christian 
knowledge it is an affair between Christians and 
their Father in Heaven, for it is a reality of the 
Life of Christ. 

88 


REV, PHILIP NAPIER WAGGETT 


II 


Within the Church, then, visible and invisible, 
the Holy Eucharist fulfils—in the measure of our 
eyes and study—a double work. It is a mystery of 
nutrition within the life of Christ, the refreshment 
of the unlapsed life of His members; and secondly 
(but only in our present consideration, secondly) it is 
the Church’s sacrifice, the sacrifice made in Christ 
by the power of the Holy Ghost, to God Almighty, 
the Blessed and Undivided Trinity. 

Consider it first as our Food. We know not 
what other powers may be exerted by Christ present 
in this sacrament; but we must consider the 
purposes of which we have assurance. We have 
not received to hold that this sacrament is a means 
whereby the life of Christ is bestowed upon those 
who have not that life. Not by this sacrament is 
the life given or restored to those who are dead. 
In this sacrament, the life of Christ, already present, 
is nourished by a new gift of the same life. 

There is a sacrament by which the life of Christ 
is extended to those who have not that life. It is 
the sacrament of Baptism. This also has its power 
in the Church. But it is a power of birth and of 
entrance, and by it the circuit of the Church is 
incessantly extended and fresh souls are added to 
the Lord. The Holy Eucharist is not, so far as 
we know and have a right to say, a means of 
extension in this way. It is a mystery of nutrition 
within the already constituted Body, and received 


89 


THE EUCHARIST AS SACRIFICE 


by those who are already living in Christ by the 
sacramental grace of Baptism, by the real gift of 
regeneration. This is what is meant by the words 
in the Catechism, “the Body and Blood of Christ 
are verily and indeed,” that is really and truly, 
in truth and in fact, ‘‘ taken and received by the 
faithful in the Lord’s Supper.’’ We are meant 
to understand not that the gift varies with the 
growth or the alertness of the receiver’s faith, but 
that it is a gift for and to Christians, the faithful, 
persons already living in the life of the Church, 
that is in Christ, the True Vine. 

A fact of religious experience seems at first to 
contradict this teaching. We come empty and go 
away fed. We come weak and go away strong. 
We come as if lost and from outside, and we are 
restored to home. We come so faint as to be for 
all purposes dead, and are brought to life. And 
so indeed it is with us. Holy Communion, and 
nothing less than Holy Communion, is, as Dr. Pusey 
taught, the complete restoration of the Penitent ; 
and blessed are those who feel left for dead and 
all but already dead when they are deprived of 
this Heavenly Food, the Children’s Bread, the 
Bread of Pilgrims, the Bread of the strong. Yes, 
we are indeed in our inmost body, soul, and spirit 
refreshed “by the Body and the Blood as our 
outward bodies are by the bread and wine” 
(Catechism). 

But this fact of refreshment after faintness is 
only ours because our life is Christ’s Life. The 


go 


REV. PHILIP NAPIER WAGGETT 


hunger is His as well as the feast. The life in Christ 
in us hungers for the life of Christ given in the 
sacrament, the life of Christ which we already— 
so unworthily, so forgetfully—possess, desires, as- 
similates, feeds upon, and is increased by the same 
life bestowed upon us in each fulfilment of the 
mystery of Communion. 

No. The power in Holy Communion is not a 
bestowal of the Heavenly Food upon those who 
have not the Heavenly Life. It is the maintenance 
and daily pulsation of the Heavenly Life by oft 
renewed—and ideally continual—assimilation of the 
life of Christ, its heart and sole foundation. 

Yes, with fear of using unworthy or unwarranted 
words, yet, in humble faith, we may speak of “A 
mystery of nutrition within the living Body of 
Christ.’’ As we see this mystery with bodily eyes, 
It passes from hand to mouth, from priest to com- 
municant; but the hand and the mouth are alike 
within the wonder of the Body of Christ; and 
what we see in Church and venerate in Holy Com- 
munion, is a participatio of that Body to which 
we all belong, in fresh pulses of its heavenly health 
and power. Here Christ extends His love and life 
to all His members, and to each member severally, 
as a father—an earthly father—gives love within 
the home that is his extended self; nay, as the 
heart throws life to every part of the bodily frame 
not from a distance but from a sovereign seat 
within. 


OI 


THE EUCHARIST AS SACRIFICE 


EL 


Secondly (in to-day’s thought, though not secondly 
in the order of origin), our Eucharist is the Church’s 
sacrifice made in the power of the Holy Spirit 
ascending in the antitypal fire, the reality foretold 
in type by the-fire of Aaron’s altar, and is offered in 
grace and truth, in reality and power, to God 
Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. 

The question is sometimes asked, “ Is this teaching 
scriptural; is it primitive? If you leave your 
special circle of fellow-worshippers, will it endure 
the collision of Christian thought based upon the 
letter of Scripture? ”’ To this question the answer 
may be twofold. Some would find it enough to 
answer that the thing we see has come to exist 
and to be believed in the Church. I cannot but 
believe that the primitive institution of our Lord, 
different from our service in appearance, possibly 
different in the minds of early believers, has rightly 
and by a real continuity come to be what we see. 
To believe otherwise, to believe that what has taken 
place has taken place by mistake, is to give up a 
practical faith in the words of the Creed, “1 believe 
in the Holy Ghost,” and “I believe in One, Holy, 
Catholic, Apostolic Church.” 

We cannot believe that what has happened in 
the Church, not here or there, not now or then, not 
in one age or place or among men of one particular 
blood, but always and everywhere, is om the whole 
a mere mistake. An universal feature of Church 


Q2 


REV. PHILIP NAPIER WAGGETT 


life, evolving echoes, making all but substantial 
shadows, in bodies of worshippers which by lack 
of order are separated from the historic Church, 
cannot be a growth of irresponsible religious fancy ; 
and I cannot suppose that it is, unless | am pre- 
pared to believe that even our perversity has been 
allowed entirely to stray by the Divine Saviour 
Who has promised to be with us to the end of 
the age. 

Such an answer, carefully guarded, is more than 
legitimate. But it will hardly change the opinion 
of the critic I have imagined. We ought to meet 
him where he is. And in point of fact, the truth 
of the Eucharistic Sacrifice has strong grounds in 
the New Testament, the record and inspired legacy 
of the first age of Truth and Grace. It is less 
obscure than is commonly supposed to earnest 
students of the New Testament. And (let me inter- 
ject) the earnest student will be a fairly constant 
student, not content to turn to favourite texts nor 
to use the Scripture as an armoury of weapons. 

There are some who have scanty leisure for study 
and are ready to use it. But others have a good 
deal, and I venture the advice that they should 
use the Latin Vulgate more than they have yet. 
This great translation often illuminates the Greek 
you know by heart, and in a great many places 
represented (during the age when we read what is 
called the Textus Receptus) the very Greek text 
which has been laboriously recovered by the 
scholarship of the last half-century. 


93 


THE EUCHARIST AS SACRIFICE 


IV 


The passage read as a text really takes for granted 
and as known the truth of a sacrifice in the Eucharist. 

The Apostle is meeting certain doubts and fears 
felt by the Christians of Corinth about the use as 
ordinary food of things that had been offered to 
idols. This is not the time to consider in detail 
the Apostle’s direction and advice. He guards 
the liberty of those Christians who see no harm 
in such ordinary, unceremonial, and indeed un- 
ceremonious, use of the sacrifices of idol temples. 
But he says, it is wiser (for the sake of less liberally 
minded believers who might otherwise be led to 
do what is distinctly against their own conscience 
and their own view of an idol sacrifice), to refrain 
from such use of the provisions which are used at 
heathen dinner-tables and indeed come upon the 
market from the heathen temples. And his argu- 
ment introduces the Holy Communion in a manner 
which would be unintelligible to any who did not 
know its sacrificial character. The man who eats 
the provisions from the heathen temple becomes 
responsible, in some sense and degree, for the 
heathen sacrifice from which the provisions actually 
come. Now no man must be a partaker of a heathen 
altar if he also desires to be a partaker of the only 
real Altar, the Christian Altar of Eucharist. To 
share the gift is to partake of the sacrifice. 

The cup we bless, he says, is a communication 
of the blood of Christ. The bread we break is a 


94 


REV, PHILIP NAPIER WAGGETT 


communication of the flesh of Christ. In the Old 
Testament, those who eat the Temple food, the 
flesh or the cakes of flour added to the slain beast, 
were certainly partakers of the @vovacrjpiov the 
altar of Sacrifice. That is his point. He assumes 
that his disciples know that those who partake of 
Holy Communion are brought in relation with an 
altar of sacrifice, a OQvoweryjpiov. Without this 
assumption there is no point of comparison and 
of contrast between the Christian Communion and 
the use of heathen temple provisions. His argu- 
ment and his plea is that we must not be concerned 
in two sacrifices, two altars, the Table of the Lord 
and the table of demons; we may not drink of 
the Lord’s Cup, and also of the cup of demons. 
The idols indeed are nothing; but those who eat 
of the stuff offered to idols become partakers of 
the sacrifice, though what they do is done without 
intention; and the sacrifice is offered not to God 
but to evil powers. It is notorious that there is a 
pretended sacrifice in the heathen worship. It is 
from the sacrifice that the food comes. Unless in 
the Holy Eucharist it is understood that there is 
a sacrifice, and that what we receive is a feast 
upon that sacrifice, the motive for avoiding the 
heathen food disappears. I regret that I may not 
trace the argument more closely. Our difficulty 
is that the point St. Paul assumes is the point we 
desire to prove. The fulcrum of his lever is the 
point of work in ours. But I think we shall easily 


see that the fulcrum is there. 


95 


THE EUCHARIST AS SACRIFICE 


Remember, I am not now showing in what sense 
the Eucharist is sacrifice. I am only pointing out 
that to the first Christians it was known to be 
our sacrifice here on earth; by what spiritual 
union with our Lord we have yet to acknowledge 
more explicitly. 

Let me recall once more the path of the Apostle’s 
argument. A liberal Christian of Corinth says 
“This wine from the Temple-market is like other 
wine; it is none the worse for coming from the 
heathen, and an intelligent and spiritually-minded 
Christian may and almost must use it, that by his 
use he may demonstrate the freedom of his con- 
science in Christ, and show a good example to 
those half-Christians who still believe in the idol’s 
reality and pay it an inverted reverence by 
avoiding it.” 

To such a man, right as his Christian liberty of 
conscience is, St. Paul answers, ‘‘ The wine is 
unchanged and the idol is nothing. But your 
participation in the surplus of the temple, your 
use of the stuff makes you concerned in the idol 
altar, its sacrifice presented to devils. How can 
you face this who come to Holy Communion ? ” 

What would be the force of this plea unless, sub 
silentto and unspoken, it was added, “ For by taking 
of the Bread of Communion you are concerned 
in the one true sacrifice, the sacrifice to God which 
is through Jesus Christ crucified and risen’”’? You — 
cannot use the two breads, because thereby you 
are involved in two sacrifices. You cannot be a 
90 


REV. PHILIP NAPIER WAGGETT 


communicant in heathen provisions since you come 
to that Table where God Himself is a Guest according 
to His promise, ‘If a man love Me [ will come in 
to him and sup with him and make him sup with 
Me.” He assumes the Christian knowledge that 
this board of Communion is an altar of sacrifice 
where God accepts with love and favour, through 
the mystery, His peoples’ only availing gift, the 
Death and Life of Jesus. 


V 


And here I all but suggest the criticism, “ But 
is not this sacrifice the true sacrifice, the Passion 
of our Lord?” Yes,indeed. “Is it not His finished 
work that has abolished, by replacing them, all 
the old prophetic sacrificial actions of Israel; all 
the groping of the heathen? Will not that save 
us, suffice us, without our doing anything corre- 
sponding to what the old worshippers did ? ”’ 

The answer is—‘ Our Lord has not provided 
His sacrifice of the Cross in order that it may act 
automatically without engaging in any way our 
wills and our obedience.’’ It is contrary to the whole 
tenor of God’s dealings with His people to suppose 
that He so acts for them as to save them the trouble 
of acting themselves. If we believed that the 
sacrifice of our Lord on Calvary had so wiped away 
all these things that men were to have no thought 
of sacrifice, but to dwell in the shadow of the Cross, 


97 


THE EUCHARIST AS SACRIFICE 


with or without conscious memory ; then we should 
suppose that God’s work was to rid human nature 
of its most important function. You might almost 
as well believe that God had done something which 
dispensed with all the thought and will of man 
outright, and accomplished his work in such a way as 
to leave them without any effort or thought; had 
saved them by an act of power quite apart from 
them. To accept the opinion that the sacrifice of 
our Lord has established a state of things in which 
we, in contrast with His old worshippers, have 
nothing to do and no worship to offer, but have 
only to live on, occupying the spaces of the earth, 
and we shall be brought at last to some “ far off © 
divine event ’’ on the bosom of the flowing stream 
of creation, would be to reduce the whole meaning 
and worth of our Christian life. It cannot be that 
the sacrifice of our Lord so replaces the ancient 
sacrifices as to make it unnecessary for us to have 
any share in it at all. It cannot be a sacrifice that 
prevails without making any claim upon our will. 
But perhaps it only demands a movement of 
our hearts? Do we not fulfil what you suggest is 
necessary when we believe in the atoning power 
of the death of Jesus? Is not this our sacrifice, 
to believe in the atoning power of the death of 
Jesus Christ, and rest in the confidence which that 
does in fact give? Here is a much more difficult 
point, and I beg you to consider carefully that 
things are not greater, more spiritual, nearer to the 
heavenly truth, or on a higher plane when they 


98 


REV. PHILIP NAPIER WAGGETT 


become merely notional, taking place in one’s own 
head, or as a pulse of feeling in one’s heart. There 
are many people who suppose that the simplicity 
of the Gospel lies in this, that it is merely notional 
and makes no demands upon the visible. What 
then is to become of the visible part of our lives? 
In respect of worship we may be certain it cannot 
be that God has left out of account all those powers 
which were formerly used in His worship. The 
careful thought, the sustained devotion, the roused 
will, the heart, the frame, the actions and the pos- 
sessions—all these God used of old. Will He not use 
them now ? Does not our faith naturally require that 
we should find somewhere in the Gospel life something 
for us to do, no less than God’s ancient worshippers did 
when, following the prescriptions handed to them 
by Moses, they brought animals for their faults, 
their ritual transgressions. Surely there must be some- 
thing for us to do. If God had not given us this 
mystery of the bestowal of the Body of Christ so 
as to be, in some sense, our sacrifice to Him, we 
should have been left desolate indeed. And the 
Christian mind would, I suppose, have reverted to 
the substantial worship of ancient Israel. Believers 
would have said—‘ This service, this meeting of 
yours which gives us nothing to do, makes no 
demand upon our obedience, which is such that 
we cannot tell in any way whether we have fulfilled 
God’s purpose or not, which has no duties and no 
bounden service, this is a frail thing like a breath, 
a whisper upon the wind, in comparison with a 


99 


THE EUCHARIST AS SACRIFICE 


system which gave people something definite, and 
even difficult and costly, to do.” It is indeed 
vain that we come to God if we do not also labour 
to make the whole of our lives conform to the law 
of the Cross of our Lord even as it is exhibited to 
us in the Holy Eucharist. But we shall not do 
that any better by leaving out of our religious ob- 
servance anything which is a substantial and actual 
and costly and difficult fulfilment of His will, and a 
real means of entering by our own action into His 
sacrifice, which was made for us upon the Cross. 


VI 


The contrast between the Old Testament and — 


the New, between the Law and the Gospel, is not © 
a contrast between a system substantial, actual — 
and involving physical duties, and another that — 
is notional, consisting only of movements or states 
of the mind. 

Life under the old system was, no doubt, largely 
notional; and many of its duties were thought 
about and not accomplished. Ours, unhappily often 
confined to notion and intention, is meant to be 
carried out in practice. 

The old Church of Israel relied often on words 
and views, just as we are tempted to do. They 
trusted to the name of Israel as we trust to the 
name of Christian. They relied on movements of 
100 


| 
| 


REV. PHILIP NAPIER WAGGETT 


feeling as we do. No contrast can be established 
between the old state and the new which implies 
that the old was concrete and actual and the new 
unpractical and mental. 

Indeed we may say more. If such a contrast 
is ever set up by Divine authority, it is set up in 
the opposite sense. It is the old which was in 
word, the new kingdom is in power and effect. 


Vil 


But the contrast which may be justly drawn is 
this. The old believers received and displayed in 
image a reality still unknown to them. The pro- 
phetic and typical Law was given through Moses. 
Grace and truth—that is to say power and substance 
—came by Jesus Christ. A figure of which the 
interpretation was for the most part unknown 
occupied the minds of the old Israel. We have 
truth, the revelation of the actual, and grace, the 
communication of life. ° 

The old sacrifice prefigured a Divine action not 
yet accomplished. Our sacrifice looks back to a 
Divine action historically accomplished, and accom- 
plished in the life of man. 

We know that which we show, for it was behind 
us in time and is present to us in power. Before 
the Lamb of God was offered upon earth, they, 
not knowing Him, but hoping for a revelation, 

IOI 


THE EUCHARIST AS SACRIFICE 


offered the daily lamb in the temporal burnt 
sacrifice. We, knowing the sacrifice of Christ, the 
Lamb of God, and looking back upon His work, 
offer the memorial sacrifice He ordained when He 
said, “‘ Do this.” 

(I am endeavouring here to repeat one of two 
ever memorable instructions received from the 
great Bishop Temple by those whom he ordained 
to the priesthood. The other was upon the ministry 
of Absolution.) 

It is to mistake the character of our worship to 
suppose that it would gain spiritual reality, by 
refusing an actual and active obedience. But to 
this subject there may perhaps be an opportunity 
to return. 

My object to-day is mainly to direct your study 
to the passage in the Corintians, and I wish I 
had shown more exactly the cogency of the argu- 
ment to be drawn from it. 

The legal or scientific mind, reading that passage, 
will confirm the statement that it implies, because 
it assumes, the existence in the first Christians of 
an intelligent belief in the sacrificial character of 
the Eucharist, a concern in the sacrifice of our 
Lord upon the Cross which is secured in the par- 
ticular solemnity of the Breaking of Bread, and 
there secured not only in a reflexion accompanying 
the observance, but so implicit in the observance 
itself as to impose corresponding duties and restric- 
tions even upon the less considerate, and upon 
the more consciously ‘‘ liberal ’’ of its frequenters. 


102 


REV. PHILIP NAPIER WAGGETT 


To us, as to his Corinthian disciples, the great 
Apostle writes, ‘‘I speak to you as to men of good 
judgment.” 

I regret that the necessary limits of your gener- 
ously patient attention force me to offer you to-day 
words upon the Eucharistic sacrifice, so dry, so 
staccato, so wanting in recognition of the true life 
of sacrifice, the return of the created being to God 
its Source and its End. 

Whatever else we omit, let us not fail to re- 
member the use of the Sacrament as our escape to 
heaven, as the purifying of desire, as the means of 
access to Him who is in the midst of us, but whose 
touch we still so dreadfully need—a chink by which 
we may kiss the hem of His garment. 

In this desire to find and in this practice of seeking 
we are one with some whose faith falters at the bright 
affirmations of our intuition or—which is it >— 
is too swift-winged to wait upon the rumbling 
advance of our definitions; with those whose 
spiritual complexion is insensitive to the appeal of 
our modes of worship, or (is it?) whose spiritual 
delicacy forbids them to make, in regard to things 
so sacred, one step which they do not understand 
to be prescribed. Whichever group of the contrasted 
Christians is the swift and the strong, whichever 
is most alive in love, let us “ wait for another ”’ 
and try to keep together, that we may, by waiting, 
in effect hasten the hour of a united sacrifice of 
Praise and Thanksgiving. 


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Rev. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, D.D., D.Lrrr. 


THE REV. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, 
PD rae 


Dr. CARPENTER is the second son of the late 
William Benjamin Carpenter, M.D., C.B., F.R.S. 
He was educated at University College School, 
and University and Manchester New Colleges, 
London, and took his Degree as M.A. in the 
University of London in 1866 with medal rank. 
After ministry at Oakfield Road Church, and 
Clifton, and Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds, he became 
Lecturer on the History of Religion in Manchester 
New College, firstin London and then at Manchester 
College, Oxford, of which he was afterwards 
Principal. He has been Wilde Lecturer in Natural 
and Comparative Religion in the University of 
Oxford ; Hibbert Lecturer; has lectured in the 
Divinity School of Harvard University, and 
delivered one of the courses in the American 
Lectures on the History of Religions. Amongst 
his publications are: ‘‘ The First Three Gospels, 
their Origin and Relations,” ‘‘The Composition 
of the Hexateuch,” ‘The Digha Nikaya” (in 
conjunction with Prof. Rhys Davids), ‘‘ Phases of 
Early Christianity,” ‘‘Theism in Medieval 
India,’’ and ‘‘ Buddhism and Christianity.” 


IN. THESSsANCTUARY. 
Rev. J. Estrin Carpenter, D.D., D.Litt. 


“As we have borne the image of the earthy, 
we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” 
1 Corinthians xv, 409. 


WE have all heard these words many times beside 
the graves of our dead. They are endeared to us 
by long association ; it is impossible ever to read 
them without a thrill, for they are charged with 
more than the triumphant confidence with which 
they were first uttered; they bear with them the 
pain and the consolation of a multitude which 
no man can number. 

In themselves they belong to a group of ideas 
which most of us, I suppose, have ceased to hold. 
They emerge out of an argument which speaks to 
us no more. They point to a mystery which in 
reality soon lost its savour. We no longer await 
the trumpet call, or look for a bodily change in 
the twinkling of an eye as this mortal puts on 
immortality. But we have accepted them as 
symbols of types of humanity which still illumine 
the vast perspectives of our modern thought. We 
look back through hundreds of thousands of years, 
and the skull of that man of Galilee discovered 
in the soil of a cave a few months ago near the 


107 


IN THE SANCTUARY 


plain of Gennesaret shows us that in a very real 
sense the first man was of the earth earthy; and 
during the ages that have passed over him his 
successors have been slowly—how slowly we hardly 
dare to think—preparing for that other Man of 
Galilee who showed us what it is to bear the image 
of the heavenly. He made his gods at first in his 
own likeness; but as thought grew stronger, and 
insight clearer, and conscience tenderer, the vision 
of faith led him ever forward. The majesty of the 
whole at last dawned upon him. The splendour of 
its beauty, its variety, its wonder without, its 
love, its righteousness, its joy within, broke on him 
with rapture. He saw his power fed from this 
mighty fount. He felt his spirit quickened into 
nobler activity. He sent his mind to roam among 
the stars. He knew his life to be more radiant 
in its high endowments than the most brilliant of 
their blazing suns. There.was the meaning of the 
process ; there the force that bore him on; there 
the purpose that shaped his course; there the 
divine intent that fixed his goal; for “ of him and 
through him and unto him are all things—God 
blessed for ever.”’ 

And the secret of Jesus was that we are at once 
His sons and fellow-workers. God is our Maker 
and Begetter. He educates and leads and trains. 
As men looked back upon the Teacher’s activities 
He seemed to say to them, “ My Father worketh 
hitherto, and I work.’’ That labour indeed was 
prayer; the energy of that toil was worship. To 
108 


REV. F. ESTLIN CARPENTER 


maintain that work and realise that worship as the 
great aid to the attainment of ‘‘ the image of the 
heavenly,” the disciple has ever since built his 
homes of faith and devotion where the clamour of 
earth might be silenced and the voices of heaven 
be heard. For the highest things of the Spirit 
are known to us by reverence and wonder, by trust 
and adoration, or they are not known at all. Reason, 
indeed, must be our guide as we measure the 
distance of the sun, determine the constituents of 
a nebula, or search for the beginnings of life. Unless 
the world and our thought were matched, we could 
never find our way from hour to hour. But though 
we should know the behaviour of every atom into 
which this great globe should be dissolved, such 
intellectual triumph would never teach us that 
truth is better than a lie, and generosity nobler 
than meanness, and purity sovereign over lust, 
and love the eternal conqueror of scorn or wrath or 
hate. There is no way of knowledge here but by 
the education of experience. The higher souls must 
lift up the lower, the strong sustain the weak, the 
clear-eyed and the brave show the path to the dull 
and timid, Listen to the prophetic voices, “ Not 
as though I had already attained, either were 
already perfect, yet follow me along the upward 
way, look with my eyes and you shall see what I 
have seen. The world shall be fuller to you of 
hope and gladness. Man shall be a nobler comrade, 
and God a more gracious Father. Enter the fellow- 
ship of those who do the Will, and out of the world’s 

109 


IN THE SANCTUARY 


conflicts you shall rise towards the Central Peace.”’ 
The race has long since heard such utterance, some- 
times proclaimed with confidence, sometimes only 
in faltering speech; it is still heard, thank God, 
even among the confusions of our time. The voice 
of the pessimist may tell us that it is a baseless 
dream ; the egoist may bid us realise that life is 
essentially the appropriation, the subduing of the 
alien and the feeble, and Christianity may be 
bitterly rejected as “‘the one great curse, the 
ineradicable blot on human nature.” “If Jesus 
of Nazareth,” continued Nietzsche, ‘“ had lived to 
my age’ (he was then thirty-eight), ‘‘ He would 
have renounced His teaching.’’ He had, in fact, 
never known its meaning. 


“ Whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest, 
Cannot confound nor doubt him, nor deny. 
Yea with one voice, O world, though thou deniest, 
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.” 


I know, indeed, that beside the common causes 
which are lowering the habit of worship in our day 
——the cares of the world, the distractions of business, 
the desire for rest after the strain of affairs, the 
eagerness for pleasure and the zest for amusement 
which our critics tell us were so prominent before 
the war—there are deeper motives which keep 
men and women in silence and solitude. The 
intellectual unrest which has followed on the dis- 
appearance of old sanctions of belief—the protest 
IIo 


REV. F. ESTLIN CARPENTER 


against unworthy doctrines belittling august realities 
—the consciousness that the great moments of life 
when we see most clearly what we might be, resolve 
most vigorously, feel most deeply, do not always 
(perhaps even rarely) occur in church—all these 
and many other reasons have produced a vague 
dissatisfaction which quenches the impulse of 
devotion. In critical uncertainty the flame of love 
expires. On the one hand men are searching 
genuinely for a wider, deeper truth, and the Spirit 
of God is their prompter in the call for a passionate 
sincerity. They will have nothing to do with old 
conventions which for them have lost their meaning ; 
they perhaps distrust the teachers who have never 
grappled (for example) with a difficult piece of 
scientific investigation. They demand a religion 
which can be proved, and with scrupulous veracity 
they will listen to no word which does not come to 
them with the full demonstration of reality. But 
they do not recognise that there are various kinds 
of reality, and they do not always look for it in 
the right place. 

There are others, however, who are not driven 
by this imperious necessity for truthfulness of 
conception and utterance. They suffer, rather, 
from a malady of the will, They are the victims 
of a mental sloth which shuns great problems, and 
complains that the tasks set them are too hard. 
The effort required of them is too exacting, and 
they turn away indignant and morose. They 
have never learned the sublime responsibility of 

III 


IN THE SANCTUARY 


independence, and when the traditional creed of 
their youth breaks down, they say to themselves 
that they have done with it; in angry revolt 
they turn away stripped of their ancient faith, but 
unable to weave for themselves new garments of trust 
and hope. There is no bitterer commentary on the 
futility of much of the religious education of our 
day than this lack of courage, this unwillingness to 
face difficult issues, this reluctance to set out on 
the great adventure, ‘‘ Seek ye the Lord,” and brave 
the perils of the quest. Had they learned in youth 
that worship is the high enterprise of the soul, they 
would not thus lightly forego its joys. They would 
know that they cannot truly live their best life— 
and bear the image of the heavenly to which they 
are called—without the conscious endeavour to 
find their place in the mighty order by which they 
are environed. It has made them; to it they owe 
their powers, their gratitude, their homage; they 
are bidden to get themselves into right relations 
to it; they must reckon with both its goodness 
and its severity; they must welcome with 
lowly awe its surprises of delight—who are 
they that such joys should visit them ?—they 
must prepare for its hardness, and take its 
buffetings with good cheer; they must respond 
blithely to its call to action or submit patiently 
to its decrees of pain, and learn beneath its 
steadfastness to rest in peace. Thus is the image 
of the heavenly formed within us, and all this is 
learned in worship. 

112 


REV. F. ESTLIN CARPENTER 


Be it that the hours which we instinctively 
recognise as the highest often come to us outside the 
sanctuary—alone perhaps upon the mountain-top 
where the glory of a world not of our making enfolds 
us, or in the rushing harmonies of mighty music 
when the marvel of creative gladness bursts on our 
souls, or by the side of our dead where thankfulness 
and compunction meet as we recall all that they 
did for us and our poor returns, and the sense of 
the mysterious ties of life wider than our little 
span of years is brought home to us with irresistible 
conviction—we shall not be prepared for these 
ineffable experiences if we have not habitually 
nourished our hearts on holy thoughts, and kept 
alive our ancient pieties. Religion rises out of our 
attitude to life, which has been first suggested in our 
childhood and then confirmed by adult experience. 
If we are only grasping at the world’s good things, 
the moments of revelation will not visit us. We 
shall be only impatient and discontented with our 
ill-success, fretful at our failures, querulous because 
we have been slighted, jealous because of others’ 
advance. The image of the earthy will be stamped 
upon us. There are men who view their. rivals 
with suspicion because they have low views of 
human nature. In this loss of reverence and trust 
sorrow and suffering become a hateful spectacle. 
“Take them away,” we cry brutally, as they stand 
and moan and show their sores, “‘and shut them 
up that they be seen no more.” When pity dies 
the power of high and noble joy will perish also. 

113 


IN THE SANCTUARY 


We shall look up no longer to the heroes or the 
saints; the ascent of Mount Everest will rouse no 
ardour; our hearts will not burn within us when 
one man gives his life for another, and perhaps 
goes down into the darkness not knowing whom 
he has saved. We _ shall not ask ourselves 
whether we could have made the sacrifice, we 
shall know in our inmost hearts that we could 
not ; and we shall be degraded in our own eyes, 
for life without worship will cease to have any 
worth, and indifference will number us in the 
ranks of the lost. 

“It may be,’ I shall be told, ‘ but cannot I 
worship alone?” Doubtless the path of prayer is 
always open. There is a church wide as the dome 
of heaven, where the preacher is always preaching, 
and the winds and the waters make deep harmonies 
of praise. Yet the testimonies of experience are 
emphatic and deserve to be heard. And they tell 
us with warnings and encouragement that the 
members of the household of God will not be 
content to pray in solitude. We may seem to 
one another inarticulate and insignificant. We 
may know little of each other’s life-story ; we each 
carry about some incommunicable secrets of failure 
or achievement, victory or defeat, quickened en- 
deavour or disappointed hope. We each have our 
intimate and personal relation with our Maker, 
Father, Judge, Deliverer, Friend. But we also each 
know that we belong to a mighty brotherhood 
stretching all round the world, all history through. 


II4 





REV. F. ESTLIN CARPENTER 


We live by the inherited experience of innumerable 
generations; the struggles and the successes, the 
sorrows and satisfactions, the energies and the 
lapses, the mortifications and the triumphs of ten 
thousand thousand souls beat in our desires, are 
reflected in our conflicts, and uphold our steps. 
This is the reason, for example, why the Bible 
still holds its cherished place in our public services. 
Its words carry us through millenniums of experience, 
and now embrace the globe. They embody in- 
finitely more than their first utterance, for they 
carry with them the hopes and the confessions, the 
praises and the prayers, of millions who have lived 
by their guidance and died in their trust. No 
modern speech can take upon it this weight of ages. 
The worship that cuts itself off from the past, 
unable to apply its venerable words, loses its base 
in the common life, and misses the strength of its 
sympathy and support. 

This sense of partnership in needs which all feel, 
and in helps which all can receive, supplies the 
natural foundation for all social worship. Each 
brings his contribution to the devotion of the 
whole. The worshipper who thinks only of what 
he can get, of the aid which he is to obtain, the 
burden of which he is to be relieved, the strength 
which he will secure, will come away unsatisfied 
because he has given nothing to the common store. 
That service will be dry and barren which is per- 
formed by others, and not shared at least in spirit 
by ourselves. You will go away unwarmed and 

115 


IN THE SANCTUARY 


fretful because you first came in cold and dull. 
You will be fastidious about the music, superior 
towards the prayers, critical of the sermon, because 
you have let the dead weight of your indifference 
fall upon each act, demanding that the worship 
should move you, while you should yourself have 
been upholding the worship. Let us remember that 
if we meet God here in the secret place of our own 
souls, that sanctuary has been built for us by the 
labours of a mighty fellowship. In the gladness of 
sacred song or the murmur of general confession we 
bear each one of us more than our own gratitude 
or humiliation before God. We are linked to the 
corporate devotion of Christendom; nay, the great 
themes of penitence and praise spread far beyond 
the beloved name of Christ; in trembling and 
wayward utterance they find expression in many 
an ancient faith; and they transcend the limits 
of our mortality, for wherever there are spirits 
throughout creation’s range who have put off the 
image of the earthy, there, too, are fellow-workers 
with the everlasting God. For it is in worship that 
we most know our kinship with the Infinite. There 
we recognise the Presence that broods over our 
life and calls us unceasingly to obedience and love. 
These are the energies that bear us forward towards 
the abiding Good. As we pass out through the 
gates of death, shall we not find another world 
which we and they have helped to make, a world 
where aspiration and endeavour shall come nearer 
to the truth which we have sought, and the 
116 


REV. F. ESTLIN CARPENTER 


right for which we have laboured? The con- 
flict and the turmoil shall drop away, and as 
the image of the earthy fades the image of the 
heavenly shall rise purer and clearer to the Eternal 
Light. 


117 









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Rev. W. R. MATTHEWS, M.A., D.D. 


THE VREV. WALTER. GROBERT 
MATTHEWS, M.A., D.D. 


Dean of King’s College, London. Dr. Matthews 
is the eldest son of Philip W. Matthews, formerly 
Chief Inspector of the Bankers’ Clearing House. 
Educated at Wilson’s Grammar School, Camber- 
well, he spent several years in business in the 
City of London. He then entered King’s College, 
London, and took the A.K.C. with First Class 
Honours in 1906, and also the Plumptre, McCaul 
and Leitner Prizes. He graduated as B.D. in 
the University of London in 1907, and obtained 
First Class Honours in the Study of Religion in 
1908; M.A., 1912; D.D., 1922. Ordained 
Deacon in 1907 and Priest in 1908, he served 
as Curate of St. Mary Abbott’s, Kensington, and 
St. Peter’s, Regent Square, and acted as Assistant 
Chaplain in the Magdalen Hospital. From 1916 
to 1918 he was Vicar of Christ Church, Crouch 
End. He was appointed Lecturer in Philosophy 
at King’s College in 1908. In 1918 he was 
appointed Professor of the Philosophy of Religion 
and Dean. He was examining Chaplain to the 
late Bishop of Oxford, and in 1920 became Chaplain 
to the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn. In 
1923 he was appointed Chaplain to H.M. the King. 
He has been Select Preacher in Cambridge, and 
is a Fellow of King’s College, and a member of 
the Senate of the University of London. He was 
Boyle Lecturer in 1920-22. Among his publi- 
cations are: ‘Studies in Christian Philosophy,” 
“The Gospel and the Modern Mind,” ‘“‘ The 
Psychological Approach to Religion,’”’ and several 
contributions to collective works. 


| 


THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING 
Rev. W. R. Marruews, D.D. 


“And kneeling down he prayed saying Father, 
if thou art willing, take away this cup from me.” 
Luke xxii, 42. 


To-DAY in our course of meditations on the subject 
of light from the Cross we reach the problem of 
suffering. We have already dealt with the insight 
which we gain from the Crucifixion on the theoretical 
question. We have seen, a few Sundays ago, how 
the Cross and Passion of the Son of God helps us 
to believe in the goodness of God. But there is 
another problem raised by suffering; one con- 
cerned not with theology but with daily life—a 
practical problem. This at any rate is plainly 
present to all men. They may perhaps not have 
reached that stage of reflective consciousness in 
which they consider the nature of the universe or 
draw up an indictment against its justice. Or 
perhaps they have passed beyond the rather elemen- 
tary stage of thinking that the world ought to 
be governed like a nursery in which good children 
are promptly rewarded with chocolates and bad 
children without delay put in the corner. They 
may have grasped the fact that this scheme 
of things is one, as Butler said, imperfectly 

121 


THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING 


comprehended by us and therefore that we must 
be contented to have no final solution of the place of 
suffering in the general purpose of God. But whoever 
you are, whether you are too stupid to be troubled 
by the theoretical problem of evil, or too wise to 
be greatly disturbed by it, you cannot escape from 
the practical problem. Suffering is not a concept 
buta fact. It meets usin the business and course of 
daily life. Even if we decide not to think about it, 
we have to act about it; we have to take up some 
attitude towards it. What shall we do with it? 
Here is the real problem ; and most of the spiritual 
and religious movements of history which have 
really stirred masses of men have been those which 
have had some kind of answer to this problem, have 
told men what to do with pain. 

The figure of Jesus in Gethsemane has perhaps 
gripped the imagination of humanity hardly less 
than the picture of Jesus on the Cross. The reason 
is clear. There is a human appeal in this solitary 
agony in the garden which is different from the 
heroic constancy of Calvary. Here we are admitted 
into the thoughts of the Crucified. We catch a 
glimpse of the mental suffering which was the 
chief part of the Passion. And I do not know any 
part of the Gospel story which is more significant 
to a candid person of the veridical character of 
these narratives. There are some who tell us still 
that the Gospels are mere mythology, a fairy tale 
composed about a fancied Son of God. The scene 
in the garden is the very last thing which would 
122 


REV. WALTER ROBERT MATTHEWS 


have occurred to the imagination of one who was 
composing a myth of that kind. Here we find the 
hero, the Divine Being, shrinking from death, 
labouring under the horror of the end which he 
foresees, and with strong crying and sweat like 
drops of blood, praying that the trial may be 
removed. These things are not mythology—they 
are the reports of facts. 

The practical problem of suffering is, then, one 
with which all mankind, including ourselves, is 
concerned, and one with which Jesus met and dealt 
in His own way. 

We shall, I think, most clearly apprehend the 
Christian answer and attitude if we set it in con- 
trast with others. And we will take our examples 
of other answers from the ancient world for two 
reasons. First, there were two methods of dealing 
with suffering, widely held and practised at the very 
time when Christianity appeared. And secondly, the 
thinkers of the ancient world generally put before 
us a problem in its general outline ; they give us its 
bare bones and its essential features, simply and 
plainly. Often, just because they know less than 
we do, they think more clearly on the main issue. 

The two views to which I have referred are of 
course the Stoic and the Epicurean. But it would 
be a great mistake to suppose that these names 
only refer to two sects of philosophers long extinct. 
Stoics and Epicureans are not all dead. On the 
contrary, I would go so far as to say that there 
are only three possible attitudes towards suffering. 

123 


THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING 


In this matter you must either be a Stoic or an 
Epicurean or a Christian. 

The Epicurean starts with the assumption that 
pain is the only evil and pleasure the only good. 
That at least, he thinks, we are sure about; and 
the obvious attitude towards suffering is to avoid 
it as far as possible, and to enjoy as many pleasures 
as opportunity affords. But the Epicurean was 
not a fool. He was a reflective person, and he saw 
full well that the profligate’s life was not the way 
of the greatest degree of pleasure. The greedy 
snatching at every pleasure which comes defeats 
its own end and leads to an overplus of pain. The 
wise man will exercise prudent self-control in order 
that his enjoyment may be unruffled. And in fact, 
since life is a sorry business at the best, the wise 
man will aim most of all at afavaxy, at imperturba- 
bility, never allowing himself to be carried away by 
hope or fear or immoderate desire. So far as possible 
he will lead a life hidden from the great conflicts and 
ambitious strife of men. He will cultivate his 
garden, hoping for peace to gain a little calm 
pleasure ere the end comes. And to this end he 
will free his mind of the hopes and fears of religion. 
It is useless to vex ourselves about matters which 
we cannot know, and foolish to suffer terrors of an 
unknown which may not exist. 

Do you think the Epicurean is dead? We can 
meet him every day. He forms a large part of the 
more prosperous classes in England. 

The Stoic, on the other hand, does not regard 
124 


REV. WALTER ROBERT MATTHEWS 


suffering as necessarily an evil. At least the truly 
wise man has risen above the plane where misfortune 
or torture can be to him a cause of fear. The true 
way of life is to attain autarkeva, self-sufficiency. 
And that can be done when we reach the condition 
of indifference to the desires which move ordinary 
men. It is our hopes and fears which unnerve us 
and make us children of chance. 


‘The worldly hope men set their hearts upon 
Turns ashes—or it prospers; and anon, 
Like snow upon the desert’s dusty face, 
Lighting a little hour or two—was gone.’ 


If we would possess ourselves we must refrain 
our desires and our affections. Yes, even those 
that are most pure. Suppose your friend dies, 
says Epictetus, shall you therefore sit and bewail ? 
Shall you forget that he was born a mortal and 
subject to death? If the pot is broken in which 
you boil your meat, do you not send to the market 
and buy another? So be it in your friendship. 
Or shall you stake your soul’s peace on the little 
son you love so dearly? What harm if, when you 
kiss him, you murmur, “ To-morrow you will die: 

Are the Stoics all dead? On the contrary, 
something like the Stoic creed is the stay of the 
nobler spirits to-day who cannot accept Christ. 

I have a fancy, which I hope is not irreverent, 
to introduce into the Garden of Gethsemane a Stoic 
and an Epicurean, and hear what they will say to 

125 


THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING 


the Man of Sorrows Who is praying there. Let us 
listen to the Epicurean—or rather let us allow the 
Epicurean in all of us to speak. 

“What a singularly unsuccessful life we here see 
brought to a crisis! Here is one who was born in 
circumstances which might have been favourable to 
a calm and pleasant existence. Not in extreme 
poverty, living the healthy life of a prosperous 
peasant, removed from the dangers of public affairs, 
a little prudence might have given Him an existence 
more than tolerable. And yet the sad spectacle is 
not without instruction for the reflective man. 
When we ask what are the causes which have led 
Him to this deplorable position, we can see that 
they are two. He suffered from the illusion that 
there was some divine will which he had to serve. 
He believed in a living God; and he was consumed 
by a chimerical ambition to confer some benefit on 
His fellow-men. Even now He might steal away 
back to the peace of Galilee ; but though He dreads 
the pain that is coming upon Him, His superstition 
will not allow Him to avoid it. A melancholy 
instance of the danger of enthusiasm and the evils 
that religion may produce.” 

Let us hear the Stoic—the Stoic in ourselves, 
“This is indeed a spectacle which must shock a 
truly enlightened person. If there were any need 
to show that this man was not a great moral teacher, 
here is proof enough. These groans and prayers 
are unworthy. One who had attained a high degree 
of virtue would have become indifferent to the 
126 


REV. WALTER ROBERT MATTHEWS 


misfortunes of life. He would have confronted 
whatever came with calm self-possession. And we 
can see easily enough the source of this weakness. 
He has not detached Himself from the desires and 
affections of lower men. He loves His brethren 
too much, and He wished to bring in God’s kingdom. 
Far better would it have been had He learned to 
treat lightly the ties of love and the desire to serve, 
and understood that everything happens in accord- 
ance with the order of the universe which it is 
impious and futile to attempt to change.” 

Brethren, I apologise for introducing these figments 
of my imagination into the sacred solitude of 
Gethsemane. And yet they may have served to 
throw into relief the grandeur of Christ’s dealing 
with suffering, the power and sanity of His answer 
to the problem. How vulgar and pedantic these 
one-sided answers appear, beside the Christ who has 
mastered suffering and made it divine! Perhaps it 
would be well to leave it there: the figure of Jesus 
over against our little epicureanism and our stiff 
unnatural stoicism. But we will try to sum up in a 
few bare words the salient points of the Christian 
answer to the question, What shall I do about 
suffering ? 

The first is the great commonplace that suffering 
is really evil. We must never be deceived by a 
spurious spirituality which would argue that pain 
can be indifferent or even good. That is not 
Christian doctrine. Gethsemane and the Cross were 
real evils which Jesus endured not for their own 

127 


THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING 


sakes but for the joy that was set before Him. 
Suffering always and everywhere is bad. It repre- 
sents the frustration of human faculty, the defeat 
of life; and it is a large part of the task before man 
to conquer suffering, to eliminate pain. The life 
of Christian duty depends on the conviction that 
pain is bad; it consists very largely in acts of 
relief, in giving cups of cold water, in dealing bread 
to the hungry and clothing the naked. 

The questions addressed to the souls who appear 
before the Son of Man at the Judgment concern 
suffering and its relief and nothing else. “I was. 
naked and ye clothed me, sick and in prison and 
ye visited me.’”’ Christ agrees with Epicurus that 
pain is evil. But He draws the opposite con- 
clusion. Suffering is evil; not only mine but all 
suffering everywhere. It is part of God’s will that 
it should be overcome. Then, if I am to be really 
against pain, I must be prepared to realise its 
existence and extent. So Christianity would make 
us more sensitive to suffering; it has increased the 
area of sorrow by making hearts tender and con- 
sciences uneasy at things men never felt before. 
It has done this, not because it thinks suffering 
good, but because it thinks it is bad and contrary 
to God’s will. Until we feel the weight of human 
pain we are not likely to enlist in the army which, 
under the leadership of Christ, is to abolish pain 
and even death. 

But suffering is not the only evil nor the deepest 
and blackest. The ultimate evil is to be opposed to 
128 


REV. WALTER ROBERT MATTHEWS 


the will of God, and the highest good to be in 
harmony with Him. And even pain and suffering, 
which are in themselves evil, may be the means 
by which the child of God promotes His purposes 
and advances towards perfection. The will can 
transmute suffering into the gold of sacrifice. 
Brethren, our Christian faith has much to say 
to us on this practical problem. It does not set us 
the impossible task of becoming men of iron, wrapped 
in impassive indifference. It does not cheat us 
with the impossible hope that we can rise above the 
changes and chances of life. On the contrary, it 
teaches us that we are creatures of flesh and blood, 
with hearts that can suffer and feel sorrow. It does 
not advise us to be lurking cowards, sheltering from 
the hard facts of life. On the contrary, it calls us 
to take into our own hearts the swords that pierce 
the souls of others—to feel more keenly the woes 
of the world, to be afflicted in its affliction. But it 
shows us that even suffering may be creative ; 
there is no pain which cannot be offered for the 
increase of the world’s good, no pang which cannot 
be consecrated by the Cross. ‘‘ Father, take away 
this cup. Yet if it may not pass away except I 
drink it; let it be in accordance with Thy will, an 
offering for the accomplishment of Thy purpose.” 


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Rev. ARCHIBALD FLEMING, D.D., H.C.F. 


THE REV. ARCHIBALD FLEMING, M.A., 
TDA Dy Ce Re 


MinisTER of St. Columba’s (Church of Scotland), 
Pont Street, S.W., since 1902. He is the eldest 
son of the late Rev. Archibald Fleming of Inchyra, 
Minister of St. Paul’s Parish, Perth. Was educated 
at Perth Academy and Edinburgh University 
(First Prizeman in Divinity). Was Assistant 
Minister in St. Cuthbert’s, Edinburgh, in 1887; 
Minister of Newton Parish, Midlothian, 1888-97 ; 
of Tron Parish, Edinburgh, 1897-1902; Minister 
of St. Columba’s in 1902; Acting Chaplain to the 
Royal Scots, rgor-3; Acting Chaplain to the 
London Scottish, 1903-22. Occasional Preacher 
before Queen Victoria and King George in Scot- 
land. Past Grand Chaplain of the Grand Lodge 
of Freemasons (Scotland); Serbian Order of 
St. Sava, 1919. Editor of Life and Work, the 
Church of Scotland Magazine, 1898-1902, and 
contributor under W. E. Henley to Scots Observer 
and National Observer. 


THE ORDER OF THE COMPANIONS 
OF JESUS* 
Rev. Arcuipatp Friemine, D.D., H.C.F. 


“ Men which have companied with us all the 
time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among 


3 


Bm ANCTS 122, 


Mucu of the controversy which has rent the Church 
of Christ has been concerned with the transmission 
of that spiritual grace which is the life-blood of 
religion. For the most part, such controversy has 
turned on sadly mechanical theories. Is it by an 
Apostolic succession? Is it by laying on of hands: 
Is it by a miraculous transmutation of the bread 
and wine of Communion into some adorable, 
mystical substance, in which is corporeally present 
the Son of God Himself? Is it through the 
machinery of the Church developed and perfected 
through the ages, that the grace of God 1s mediated 
to mankind? We know what contention and 
strife has gone on for centuries, and is still going 
on, over points of difference such as these. We are 
repelled and discouraged by these interminable 
and barren discussions, and, wearily perhaps, we 
reopen the New Testament to see whether they are 
really necessary—whether there is not some simpler 


* A Meditation at Holy Communion. 


133 


ORDER OF THE COMPANIONS OF FESUS 


explanation of what our Lord intended to be the 
main thread of continuity, running through all 
future time, which would unite His followers in 
an abiding and historical unity. 

I think we find a clue to such an explanation in 
the words of our text. You will remember that, 
after our Lord’s Ascension, there was a vacancy 
in the number of the Apostles; and the remainder 
were met together for the purpose of filling it. 
Our text tells us what was the test of suitability 
for the sacred office which had been agreed upon 
among them. It was this—it was that the new 
Apostle must be one who had regularly companied 
with the Christian band. He must have been within 
the circle of the magic influence. He must have 
breathed the atmosphere that our Lord created 
around Him. He must be one who was identified 
with the great Cause, not through formal initiation, 
but from an intimacy and familiarity with Him 
Who was its Founder, with His entourage, and 
manner of life, and general outlook. It was thus 
secured that, heart and soul, he had become one 
of the new Fraternity—a true member of the newly 
founded order—the Order of the Companions of 
Jesus. ; 

Now, I can imagine the sigh of relief with which 
the plain man, when he falls back on the New 
Testament, makes this discovery. Taking this clue 
from the Book of Acts, he carries it back with him 
into the Gospels. And there he sees our Lord at 
work—not on the invention and institution of any 


134 


REV. ARCHIBALD FLEMING 


elaborate church ritual or ecclesiastical machinery, 
but just working through this medium of companion- 
ship. These men around Him who were to have 
the responsibility of disseminating His Gospel, and 
of handing it down to the generations following, 
were to be fitted for the task just through companying 
with Him. In this way they were to become 
saturated with His ideas and aims. By this con- 
tagion they were to become devotees of the religion 
of Love. There was no paper scheme of an organ- 
ised religious society set out before them; no 
substitute for or successor to the Law and the Talmud 
was put as a new textbook into their hands. Things 
of that sort might become expedient when His 
followers became unmanageably numerous, or when 
the practical applications of Christianity required 
some codification and arrangement. But these were 
secondary things—they were, at best, the machinery, 
certainly not the life, of the new society. The 
vital thread that was to run through the Church, 
and down the ages, was that of Christian character. 
And that character was to be transmitted from 
man to man and age to age by the medium of 
companionship. A man was, as it were, to catch 
Christianity from his neighbour as by a subtle and 
irresistible infection of the soul. 

Now, let us carry this simple thought along with 
us into the realm of our Christian life to-day. 
What is the underlying purpose of the Church of 
Christ ? It is the fostering and consolidating of a 
great Companionship. What thought do we find 


K 735 


ORDER OF THE COMPANIONS OF FESUS 


to be among the most inspiring, as we sit in our 
multitudes around the Lord’s Table? Is it not 
the uplifting thought that we are all members of 
the Order of the Companions of Jesus? It isa 
vast, it is an honourable Order. It is world-wide 
in its scope and age-long in its endurance. It is 
one in which, individually, we find support, en- 
couragement and confirmation in the presence and 
loyalty of the rest collectively. It is supremely 
comforting and energizing to belong to this com- 
panionship, because we are conscious of the abiding 
presence and power of its King and Founder. We 
are moulding one another’s characters in this com- 
panionable contact ; and He, by ceaseless spiritual 
contact, Himself continues to mould our dispositions 
and sway our wills. We get from Him the Christian 
point of view; and we find, in this companionship, 
a great encouragement, for we discover that countless 
others share His way of thought and life along with 
us. Thus we edify one another in love and in good 
works. 

Now those who “forsake the assembling of 
themselves together’’ in Christian congregations 
lose the unspeakable benefit and comfort of this 
companionship. If they remain religious at all, 
theirs is apt to become a self-centred, self-com- 
placent, isolated and selfish religion. But the 
chances are that such people will not long remain 
religious. The forces dragging them the other way 
are too strong. The taunts of the worldly, which 
they have to listen to alone, become too galling. 
136 


REV. ARCHIBALD FLEMING 


The way of lapse is fatally easy; and they have 
sacrificed the uplifting and steadying power of 
conscious membership in a magnificent confra- 
ternity. It is a terrible loss and danger to lose 
contact with those of like sympathy with ourselves, 
in association with whom we might both find help 
and give it ; correcting one another’s disproportioned 
views ; stilling one another’s fears and steeling one 
another’s good resolves. Companionship is the 
binding cement and uniting alchemy of the Church, 
To neglect it, to cultivate an intellectual, a spiritual 
or a social aloofness, is to betray our Lord’s com- 
mission, and to imperil the salvation of our souls. 

It is to betray our Lord’s commission. For what 
are our orders from Him? On what errand does 
He send us forth? Is it not to ensure the tradition 
of the Christian character? Is it not to keep true 
to the type of it ourselves, and teach others to be 
true to the type? It was a splendid faith in 
humanity, that of our Lord, when He dispensed 
with all visible machinery, when He did not commit 
a single word of His great message to writing, but 
simply trusted to the continuous enthusiasm and 
faithfulness of His followers to pass it on from 
mouth to mouth, from heart to heart, from land 
to land; from age to age. He trusted to human 
loyalties alone to bring the generations within the 
circle of His wonderful companionship. It was a 
splendid faith which must surely make us not only 
proud of our Master’s confidence, but zealots to 
prove that His faith in us was just. 


137 


ORDER OF THE COMPANIONS OF FESUS 


That, therefore, is the exalting and ennobling 
thought with which I would have you encircle the 
Table of the Lord to-day. Some of you are joining 
the Companionship of the Sacrament, the Noble 
Order of the Companions of Jesus, for the first 
time to-day. Others of you are coming back to it 
after a separation in which, perhaps, you have 
realised how difficult it is to be true to Christ when 
you are standing quite alone. You have come to 
be refreshed by a renewal of the fellowship; and 
you will not have come in vain. There are still 
others who, more and more as the years steal over 
their heads, think of this Table as a shadowy yet 
certain forecast of another Communion more com- 
plete, more disentangled from the encumbrance 
and interruption of material things, which awaits 
them in the King’s nearer presence: in the House 
of God not made with hands. And still others of 
us are conscious of some angel presence; of the 
flutter of wings so near, although invisible; dear 
spirits returned, ready to desert for a space even 
the perfect companionship of Heaven, in order to 
be with us for a little once more. They would 
fain infect us with their joy and peace. They 
would fain give us the certainty that loving presences 
are still around and near us, though unseen. That 
sense will bring home to us the vastness and grandeur, 
the actuality and immortality, of the spiritual 
solidarity in which they and we are alike embraced. 
And all these feelings and emotions are represented 
here to-day; all these classes of age or youth, of 
138 


REV. ARCHIBALD FLEMING 


attainment and of temperament. We are here to 
eat one meat, to drink of a common cup, to sit 
around one table, just that we may realise, com- 
pletely and reassuringly, that we are secure within 
that fellowship of which the family is the earthly 
emblem, the Cross is the consecrated symbol, and 
love, sacrifice and service are the watchwords and 
the bond. 


139 


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Rev. Principat A. E. GARVIE, M.A., D.D. 


THE REV. PRINCIPAL ALFRED E. 
GARVIE, M.A., D.D. 


Principat of Hackney and New College, Hamp- 
stead. He is the son of Peter Garvie, linen 
manufacturer, and of Jane Kedslie Garvie, and 
was educated at a private school in Poland, then 
privately at"home, afterwards at George Watson’s 
College, Edinburgh. He took his M.A. with First 
Class Honours in Philosophy, Glasgow, in 1889; 
his B.A. with First Class Honours in Theology, 
Oxford, in 1892; his B.D., Glasgow, in 1894; 
his M.A., Oxford, in 1898; Hon. D.D., Glasgow, 
1903. He was at Edinburgh University from 
1878-79; then in business in Glasgow from 
1880-84; at Glasgow University from 1885-89, 
where he was First Prizeman in Greek, Latin, 
Logic, Literature, Moral Philosophy, and gained 
the Logan Gold Medal as the most distinguished 
graduate in Arts, 1889. He was at Oxford 
University from 1889-93; Minister of Macduff 
Congregational Church from 1893-95; President 
of the Congregational Union of Scotland in 1902; 
Professor of the Philosophy of Theism, Comparative 
Religion, and Christian Ethics in Hackney and 
New Colleges, London, 1903-7; Principal of New 
College, Hampstead in 1907; Chairman of the 
Congregational Union, 1920; and President of 
the National Free Church Council, 1924. His 
publications include: ‘‘ Studies in the Inner Life 
of Jesus,” ‘Studies of Paul and his Gospel,”’ 
“The Beloved Disciple,” “‘ The Christian Preacher,”’ 
“The Christian Certainty amid the Modern 
Perplexity,” ‘The Ritschlian Theology,’ and 
“The Christian Doctrine of the Godhead.” 


THE GRACIOUS INVITATION 
Rev. Princrpa, AtFrrep E. Garviz, M.A., D.D. 


“Come unto me all ye that labour and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my 
yoke upon you, and learn of me, for [ am meek and 
lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your 
souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden 1s 
light.” Matthew xi, 28-30. 


THE pious imagination of the Christian Church has 
surrounded the heads of the disciples of Jesus with 
a halo of sanctity that fades away in the light of 
historical scrutiny. What the Gospels reveal is 
‘misunderstanding, distrust, and even estrange- 
ment. Again and again Jesus had to reproach 
them with dulness of mind, lack of faith, and even 
opposition. The failure of the disciples to rise to 
the height of their opportunity was one factor in 
the tragedy of the earthly ministry of Jesus. At 
the end one betrayed, one denied, and all forsook 
and fled: and He was left alone in His agony and 
desolation. 

(a) While there is submission to the Father’s 
will, there is also disappointment in Jesus’ estimate 
of His own success. ‘‘I thank thee, O Father, the 
Lord of Heaven and Earth, that thou didst hide 
these things from the wise and understanding, and 


143 


THE GRACIOUS INVITATION 


didst reveal them unto babes; yea, F ather, for so 
it was well-pleasing in thy sight ” (Matthew xi, 25-26). 
We cannot doubt that the hostility of the scribes 
and Pharisees grieved Him. Are we not entitled 
to believe that the inability of His disciples to 
apprehend His truth, and appropriate His grace 
more fully than they did, also grieved Him? He 
who welcomed the babes, and set a child in the 
midst did not use the word “ babes” here with 
any scorn, but in all tenderness; and yet was 
there not a wistful longing for disciples to whom 
He could disclose His mind more fully, and bare 
His heart more openly? He comforts Himself 
not only for the unbelief of ‘the wise and under- 
standing,’’ but even for the failure fully to know Him 
of “the babes”’ by the assurance of His intimate 
communion as Son with God as Father, “ All 
things have been delivered unto me of my Father; 
and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father ; 
neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, 
and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal 
him” (verse 27).  Distrusted by scribes and 
Pharisees, even misunderstood by His disciples, 
His refuge is in His relation to God of complete 
submission and entire dependence as well as in- 
timate communion. This saying has been described 
as “a block of Johannine marble which has strayed 
into the plain brick structure of the Synoptic 
record.” It is found, however, in Luke also (x, 21-22) 
and probably belongs to the earliest collection 
of the sayings of Jesus. It is not inconsistent with 


144 


REV. ALFRED E. GARVIE 


what the Synoptists record of Jesus’ relation to 
God and man. That only once does such an 
utterance find a place in the Synoptics is a further 
proof of the reserve regarding the deepest things in 
Himself that Jesus had to exercise in view of the 
spiritual immaturity of His disciples. 

(b) Whether this is the historical context of the 
gracious invitation (verses 28-30) or not, it is the 
context in the light of which its meaning can best 
be interpreted. Conscious on the one hand of all 
that He as Son could reveal of God as Father, and 
conscious on the other hand of how little His present 
disciples, ‘‘ the babes,” could receive of that revela- 
tion, Jesus here expresses His desire for disciples 
who should come to Him with a deeper need, and 
to whom He could impart a richer blessing. It is 
surprising that this saying is not found in Luke, 
to whose spirit it would seem to be so congenial ; 
but there is no reason for assigning it to the evangelist 
himself as a free citation of Sirach iv, 23: “ Draw 
near unto me, ye unlearned, and lodge in the house 
of instruction.” Solitary as it stands in Matthew's 
Gospel, it breathes the very spirit of the Son of 
Man and the Man of Sorrows. Dr. Bruce has 
suggested that for the saying itself Luke has given 
three illustrations in the immediate context of 
human burdens, and Jesus’ removal of them as 
teacher—the lawyer’s, Martha’s, and the disciples 
(x, 25-xi).* Approaching this saying from this 
assumption that Jesus is seeking disciples to whom 

* See The Kingdom of God, pp. 35-38. 
145 


THE GRACIOUS INVITATION 


He can give more than to the disciples He already 
has, because they can receive more, we may con- 
sider now more fully (1) who are the invited? 
(2) what is the inducement offered? and (3) what 
is the injunction given ? 

(x) Of the three illustrations of human burdens 
which Dr. Bruce finds in the context in Luke’s 
Gospel, only the first seems to be really what Jesus 
had in view. (a) The test and the burden of which 
He was thinking was not ordinary work or common 
care, but the strain which was imposed on serious 
and earnest men by the law as interpreted by the 
scribes and practised by the Pharisees. Not all 
the Pharisees were hypocrites; not all the scribes 
quibblers with the letter of the Scriptures. There 
were among them men to whom it was a toil and 
a burden both to discover and to discharge their 
duty according to the will of God. Was not the 
rich young ruler, whom Jesus loved, such an one? 
He had kept all the commandments from his youth 
and yet he knew he lacked something to be assured 
of winning eternal life. Still more, was not Saul of 
Tarsus‘such an one? “‘O wretched man that I am, 
who shall deliver me out of the body of this death ? ” 
(Romans vii, 24). Jesus yearned to draw to Himself 
souls in so desperate distress. (b) Christianity does 
dignify labour, and sanctify sorrow, and the toilers 
and the sufferers will find in Christ solace and 
succour. But what is most the interest of Christ is 
the man to whom morality and religion are a 
problem, who is striving to know and do the right, 
146 


REV. ALFRED E. GARVIE 


and finds the struggle often a “forlorn hope,” 
who is seeking after God, and is often baffled in 
his quest, or who, knowing God as holy and himself 
as sinful, craves the assurance of forgiveness, and 
does not secure it. It is man’s extremity of moral 
and spiritual need that is Christ’s opportunity of 
revealing God in redeeming man. We do not 
depreciate all that Christian faith, hope and love can 
do to beautify and ennoble the manifold interests of 
human life in insisting that what Christ is primarily 
concerned with is man’s need of goodness and of 
God, that He seeks first of all and most of all to 
minister to souls distressed by failure and doubt, 

-and that He as no other can solve the problems of 
morality and religion. 

(2) What is the inducement that Jesus offers to 
those whom He here addresses? (a) He offers His 
companionship, His teaching and His service. 
What a contrast He did present to the scribes and 
Pharisees in all these respects. The scribe reckoned 
the man who knew not the law as accursed, and 
the Pharisees shrank from the defilement of contact 
with one reputed a sinner. Jesus did not repel, 
but attracted. The women, the children, the 
outcasts felt at home with Him. That gracious 
presence itself brought relief and assurance. And 
as was His person, so was His speech. He spoke 
as one having authority, but His words were words 
of grace. He spoke of the Father in Heaven, and 
the forgiveness of sin, of the worth of even the 
worst, and the hope of his recovery, of love to 


147 


THE GRACIOUS INVITATION 


God and love to man as the fulfilment of all demands 
of religion or morality, of Himself as Teacher, 
Friend and Saviour. The service to which He 
called men He did not impose on men, but He 
shared with men as One who came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister. If there were a 
cross to bear, it would be in following Him. His 
yoke would be found easy, and His burden light, 
because of what He was Himself, meek, patient 
with weakness, pitiful to failure, unresentful to 
wrong, forgiving sin, lowly, depending on God, and 
submissive to God as His Father, not looking down 
on any man, however unworthy, but stooping down 
to the worst that He might lift them up. He did 
not offer comfort, ease, relief from every burden, 
release from every labour; but such a transforma- 
tion of all that apart from Him might be grievous 
and oppressive, that He in His grace would give 
rest, and His disciples by trust and surrender would 
find rest in Him, the solution of their problems, 
the satisfaction of their needs, the consolation of 
their sorrows, and the solace of their toils. 

(6) As Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, 
yea, and for ever, it is personal relationship to Him 
which is still the good to be offered to all men. 
Although He is a spiritual, and not a sensible 
presence now, He is not less real as Saviour and 
Lord, and the relation to Him need not be less 
real than was the relation of His disciples in His 
earthly ministry. Men have often substituted the 
Gospel, or the plan of salvation, or the doctrine 
148 


” 


REV. ALFRED E. GARVIE 


of His person and work for Himself, instead of 
making all speech about Him sacramental, a channel 
through which He Himself might draw near to 
men, and draw them to Himself. What He still 
offers is His companionship, His teaching, and His 
service; and that offer is enhanced in value by 
His sacrifice for the salvation of men. Belief in 
the atonement for sin in His death as a ground of 
salvation must not be separated from this personal 
relation to Him, for only in this personal relation 
to Him can salvation in fulness of cleansed and 
hallowed life be realised. Paul, who gloried only 
in the Cross, knew himself to be crucified and 
risen with the Living Lord. Creed and code, ritual 
and polity must all be subordinated to, and can 
find justification only as subservient to this personal 
relationship. To the spiritual presence of the 
Living Christ we must give all the content of truth 
and grace which were shown in the historical Jesus. 
Not a theological abstraction, but a personal reality 
can alone give rest, and in such alone can rest be 
found. 

(3) As the two phrases, “I will give you rest ” 
(verse 28) and “ Ye shall find rest unto your souls ” 
(verse 29) indicate, the divine gift must become the 
human gain. Truth and grace can never be 
passively received; there must be an activity in 
receiving. Just as food must be eaten and air must 
be breathed for the sustenance of the physical life, 
so there must be a human response to the divine 
approach. (a) ‘‘Come unto me,” “Learn of me,” 


149 


THE GRACIOUS INVITATION 


“Take my yoke’’; this is the threefold injunction. 
The companionship must be used, the teaching must 
be understood, the yoke must be accepted, if all 
that is so graciously and generously offered is to 
be adequately possessed. The disciple must depend 
on, and surrender himself to, the Master, as well as 
hold intercourse with Him. The relation between 
the Father and the Son, indicated in verses 26 
and 27, must be reproduced in the relation of the 
disciple to the Master. As it was Jesus’ meekness 
and lowliness of heart that made His own yoke 
easy and His own burden light in His submission 
to God and service for man, and made also easy 
the yoke and light the burden of His disciples, so 
surely in this also He was giving an example. 
(5) What Christ requires of dependence and sub- 
mission can be made an easy yoke and a light 
burden only as a man becomes meek and lowly in 
heart. Self-conceit, self-confidence and self-assertion 
must be laid aside. There must be contrition for 
sin, humility in the sense of weakness and un- 
worthiness, adoration of the greatness of the love 
of God in Christ, gratitude for the blessings be- 
stowed, if the personal relation to Christ is to 
yield all the good that can be found in it. Grace 
can be welcomed, claimed, used and enjoyed only 
in faith, and what is that but ‘‘meekness and 
lowliness of heart”? Only as a man distrusts and 
disowns his self-sufficiency can he discover and 
prove the sufficiency for every human need that 
is in God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

150 


REV. ALFRED E, GARVIE 


We have so far, as the text requires us, been 
considering the relation of the individual disciple 
to Christ. But in closing we may widen the range 
of our vision, and think of the world around us 
labouring and burdened. Was there ever an age 
more conscious of its problems, perils and needs 
than ours is? Was there ever an age that was more 
in want of this gracious invitation? If the Church 
believes, as it must believe unless it is lacking in 
faith, that Christ alone can solve these urgent and 
menacing problems, should it not seek and strive 
to understand His adequacy and His appropriate- 
ness to the challenge of the hour, so that it can 
with certainty, confidence and courage present Him 
in the Sovereignty of His Saviourhood and allow 
Him to offer His gracious invitation so persuasively 
that the world will heed and hear, and in Him be 
saved and blessed ? 







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Rev. Principan H. WHEELER ROBINSON, M.A. 


THE REV. PRINCIPAL H. WHEELER 
ROBINSON, M.A. 


PrincipaL of Regent’s Park (Baptist) College, 
London; President of the Baptist Historical 
Society; formerly Tutor in Rawdon (Baptist) 
College, Leeds (1906-1920); and Minister of 
Pitlochry Baptist Church (1900-1903), St. Michael’s 
Baptist Church, Coventry (1903-1906), and South 
Parade Baptist Church, Headingley, Leeds 
(1917-1920). He was born in Northampton in 
1872; and after some years of business life studied 
at Regent’s Park College, the University of 
Edinburgh (1891-1895), Mansfield College, Oxford 
(1895-1900), and the University of Strassburg 
(1899). Sometime Junior and Senior Septuagint 
Prizeman, Houghton Syriac Prizeman, and 
Junior and Senior Kennicott Scholar in the 
University of Oxford. Heé has published “‘ Deuter- 
onomy and Joshua,” in The Century Bible, ‘‘ The 
Christian Doctrine of Man,’ ‘‘ The Religious Ideas 
of the Old Testament,” ‘“‘The Cross of Job,” 
“The Cross of Jeremiah,’ and ‘“‘ Baptist 
Principles.” 


FORGIVENESS 
Rev. Principar H. WuHeeter Rosinson, M.A. 


“ Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven 
our debtors.’’ Matthew vi, 12. 


A GREAT teacher of God’s Fatherhood has told us 
that the Lord’s Prayer declares man to be God’s 
child by nature. The truth of this is apparent. 
In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus gathers the whole 
human family at the feet of their Father—the 
reverent child, praying that God’s name may be 
hallowed, the ambitious child, praying that His 
Kingdom may come, the obedient child, praying 
that His will may be done, the hungry child, asking 
for his next day’s portion, the erring child, asking 
to be forgiven, the tempted child, clasping the 
strong hand of God.* The scene is so homely that 
we forget the majesty of its meaning. The teaching 
is so simple and direct and familiar that we may 
not recognise within it a philosophy of life, a declara- 
tion of the kinship of man and God, and a philosophy 
of revelation, an assurance that what is true of 
man’s spiritual nature is also true of God. The 
Father is known by His children. He is greater, 
far greater than they are or can conceive; yet their 


* cf, Phillips Brooks, The Influence of Jesus; p. 19. 
155 


FORGIVENESS 


experience, in its own small way, does reflect His, for 
they all belong to one family. 

This general truth is expressly stated in the text, 
“Forgive . . . as we forgive.’ It brings together 
divine and human forgiveness as not different in 
kind, if they are in degree. The divine Father is 
asked to forgive as the human brother forgives. 
Divine forgiveness is the central fact of the Christian 
Gospel; human forgiveness is the central act of 
Christian morality. These are brought together as 
that which God has joined and no man can put 
asunder, Jesus does not encourage us to pray for 
forgiveness if we are not learning to forgive; how 
can we know the meaning of the higher, if we are 
ignorant of the lower ? 


I 


The meaning of human forgiveness is often mis- 
understood. Forgiveness does not mean submission 
to circumstances, bowing to the inevitable, doing 
nothing to avenge ourselves because we are unable 
to do anything. The man who says on what may be 
his death-bed, “I forgive him—if I do not get 
better,’ of course knows nothing of forgiveness. 
It is no slave-morality, dignifying weakness with a 
fine name. Forgiveness means at least the refusal 
to use a right within our power, the refusal to collect 
a debt we might collect if we would. That debt 
may be material or spiritual, an injury to our goods 
156 


REV. H. WHEELER ROBINSON 


or to our rightful dignity ; forgiveness will mean 
at least that we voluntarily accept the loss, or 
ignore the insult, and so far as in us lies, leave it 
out of the reckoning in our future thoughts and 
deeds. It is a mere travesty of forgiveness to say, 
“I forgive, but I can’t forget.”’ 

But Christian forgiveness is positive as well as 
negative. It is not content to put all resentment 
aside. It recognises an active duty to restore and 
save. My brother has injured himself in wronging 
me, and his injury calls me to be the Good Samaritan, 
just because the road of life has brought us together. 
I cannot wash my hands of him, and say it is not 
any concernofmine. Itismyconcern. The duties 
that seek us are more than those we seek. He has 
fallen morally if he has really wronged me, and it 
is my business to try to set him on his feet again. 
It is my business all the more when the fallen man 
proves to be my enemy. If we are reluctant to 
admit this, it is because we have not yet come into 
sight of the Christian standard of forgiveness. Of 
some of God’s servants it has been true that to 
wrong one of them was to make him a friend for ever. 

This takes us, or at least it takes the true saint, 
still further into the mystery of forgiveness. The 
really good man cannot identify himself with the 
evil man, in pity and love and helpfulness, without 
suffering. This is not to be measured by personal 
inconvenience, the expenditure of time and money 
and energy, the endurance of insult or blows, Its 
deepest aspect is spiritual. The very contact with 


157 


FORGIVENESS 


evil is an agony for the pure soul. That saint of 
God, Henry Drummond, to whom so many came 
to confess the loathsomeness of their souls, once 
told a friend, “I have felt I must go and change 
my very clothes after the contact.’’ The man who 
wrongs another bares his heart to him as to no 
priest in the confessional. The forgiving saint enters 
into a priesthood of suffering, and his suffering is 
a prophecy of what the penitent sinner shall himself 
come to know. 

The finest human forgiveness always anticipates 
penitence. It does not cautiously wait until its 
object be worthy. It does not require so much 
repentance to be weighed into the scales of morality 
before so much of the coin of forgiving love can be 
exchanged. There is always something suspicious 
in a zeal for the righteousness of God and the 
administration of His kingdom which enables us to 
postpone paying the price of forgiveness until 
somebody has been properly punished or properly 
humbled. A good deal of our own self-assertiveness, 
a good deal of our own wounded pride, may lie 
hidden behind our plea for justice. In this matter 
of forgiveness, we are too anxious to have it known 
that God is on our side, and not sufficiently anxious 
as to whether we are on His. If we knew more of 
Him, and of His ways, we should be bolder in 
forgiving. The door that is closed to well-merited 
rebuke may open to forgiving grace. It can inflict 
a holy wound deeper than any blow, and bring the 
godly sorrow of repentance, which is heaven’s joy. 
158 


REV. H. WHEELER ROBINSON 


If 


The meaning of divine forgiveness is often mis- 
understood, no less than the human. We think 
that it means escaping the consequences of our 
sins. In some bitter hour, when our sins have 
found us out, we are ready to cry for help to the 
God we have forgotten, and our prayer is to be 
saved from exposure before men, lest we shrink 
from what we shall see in their condemning eyes. 
The face of God is not so terrible to us—for we 
have never seen it. He stands afar off in our 
thought, and we are concerned only with what is 
nearest to us. Save me from this disgrace, this 
suffering, this loss; save me from this inevitable 
result I might have known, and in my heart did 
know beforehand, when I sinned; let me only 
escape, and I will go and sin no more. How often 
we have broken those cowardly promises! How 
mean and unworthy we should be in our own eyes, 
if we treated men as we have treated God! But 
such prayers are not really prayers for forgiveness, 
for they do not know what forgiveness is; such 
prayers are never gathered into the prayers of the 
saints which mingle with the incense upon the 
golden altar. 

The true prayer for forgiveness is that which 
cries, ‘Purge from the sin, but never from the 
pain.” There are natural consequences of doing 
wrong from which there is no escape. Nature is 
inexorable, and Nature is God’s. Broken health, 


159 


FORGIVENESS 


weakened will, sullied memories, lost opportunities 
-—who can make these as though they had not been ? 
Unkindness and injustice to others, cowardly 
shrinking from duty and its responsibilities, the 
poisoned word and the evil example—who can 
overtake these? Yet this does not mean that there 
is no forgiveness ; what it means is that forgiveness 
is something deeper than the escape from conse- 
quences. Those consequences can themselves be 
changed, not by removal, but by re-interpretation, 
Penalties can become privileges. The penitent man 
may even rejoice in the discipline of their chastise- 
ment. The wrong done to others becomes a new 
obligation and incentive to service. Surely Paul 
felt this when he remembered his share in the death 
of Stephen. 

Some would tell us that God’s forgiveness is very 
simple; He has but to say the word, and forget 
the sin. Did not the prophets, they say, call men 
to repentance, and promise divine forgiveness, 
without any elaborate machinery of atoning grace? 
Does not Jesus Himself, in the parable of the 
prodigal son, dwell on the ready and eager welcome 
of the father, waiting to be gracious? Does He 
not in the Lord’s Prayer suggest that forgiveness 
is to be won simply by the sincere asking? But 
think again of that prayer, “ Forgive... as we 
forgive.” If we know something of the deeper 
meaning of human forgiveness, its large demands, 
its patient service, its cost in suffering, we shall 
not think lightly of that which must be so much 
160 


REV. H. WHEELER ROBINSON 


deeper and higher, and so much more costly, the 
forgiveness of God. We shall not join in the careless 
optimism of Omar Khayyam, and say, © He’s a 
Good Fellow, and ’twill all be well,” or in the bitter 
word of Heine on his death-bed, ‘‘ God will pardon 
me, ‘tis His trade.” If the prophets promise for- 
giveness, they tell us something also of the sorrows 
of God, the anguish of His heart over human sin 
and disloyalty (like a husband’s over a faithless 
wife), the desolation of a people that takes the joy 
from God, the thought of God as the great burden- 
bearer, so different from the images of other gods 
that are carried on beasts of burden. The parable 
of the forgiving father sets forth only the joy of 
God at His son’s return; yet the very figure of 
human fatherhood should teach us that the joy 
itself is a measure of the sorrow now past, the cost 
of our sin to those who love us. 

The Cross of Christ is the revelation of that love, 
but it is more—it is the realisation in time of the 
love that is eternal, the sacrificial offering of a 
life so lived in fellowship with God that it becomes 
the life of God manifest in the flesh. It is not a 
ransom paid to an angry God, whose anger must 
be bought off—Jesus never said that. It is not a 
penalty required by an ungracious God _ before 
He would forgive—Paul never said that. “God 
commendeth His own love towards us, in that 
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” The 
act of Christ is the love of God, and it could be 
that only because Christ became one with the 

161 


FORGIVENESS 


Father in the fellowship of holy love and forgiving 
grace. If the human forgiveness at its highest and 
holiest is always sacrificial, how could the divine 
be less? How can human sin be taken into the 
circle of divine holiness save as suffering ? 


iil 


The fellowship of man and God in forgiveness is 
seen in its perfection in the Cross of Christ, and 
heard in the cry of that Cross, “ Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do.” But, 
on the lower level of our imperfect human life, it 
is surely implied in the Lord’s Prayer which He 
bids us offer, “Forgive us... as we forgive.” 
Those words are not to be taken, as they sometimes 
are, as a sort of bargain with God, as though we 
forgave only in order to be forgiven. That would 
be a denial of the Gospel of grace, and a caricature 
of the Christian duty of forgiveness. Duty is never 
a bargain with God. Its glory is in its absoluteness. 
Its authority lies in its intrinsic character. He 
who has discovered the true nature of human 
forgiveness must forgive his brother’s debt, or he 
would incur a greater one himself. He would 
forgive, though he were not forgiven. That is 
the thought that stirs the heart of the apostle who 
counted himself a debtor to all men, whilst ready 
to cry, “I could wish that I myself were anathema 
from Christ for my brethren’s sake.”’ 

162 


REV. H. WHEELER ROBINSON 


When a man has learnt to say that, he has entered 
into a fellowship with the forgiving God like that 
of the son in a human family who grows into the 
full knowledge of his father’s purposes and aims. 
The words ‘“‘ forgive . . . as we forgive’’ describe 
the living spirit of the family. They are no external 
bargain; they are no arbitrary condition. The 
laws of God are never arbitrary. They spring from 
the nature of His being. Unless we ourselves know 
the forgiving spirit, we cannot come within sight 
of the forgiveness of God. That law of the Christian 
life is written plainly in the story of those two 
Christians of Antioch who had quarrelled; one, 
though a priest, refused to forgive his friend, who 
sought to be reconciled. Persecution came, and 
the priest endured torture valiantly, and was con- 
demned to die for his faith. His friend’s appeal 
to be forgiven was still refused. Then the martyr’s 
strength left him, and he recanted—only to see his 
friend step into his place, and die for Christ’s 
honour. “He that loveth not his brother whom 
he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath 
not seen? ”’ 


IV 


The true emphasis in this fellowship of human 
and divine forgiveness must not be forgotten. 
Fatherhood comes before brotherhood, and Christian 
brotherhood is made possible only by divine Father- 
hood, holy and sacrificial grace. ‘‘ We love, because 

163 


FORGIVENESS 


He first loved us.” If we forget that, we may 
easily fall into the fault of the Pharisee, and our 
very virtue becomes a snare. It was not he who 
gave thanks for his own character who went down 
justified from the temple ; it was the man who could 
only cry, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” The 
forgiving spirit towards others is a true test of our 
fellowship in the family where divine forgiveness is 
known; yet the forgiving spirit is itself a fruit of 
the Spirit of Christ—“ love, joy, peace, longsuffering, 
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self- 
control.’’ Christian morality is never an independent 
achievement. It is a fruit that grows by the river 
of life whose springs are fed from the hills of God. 
‘““Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, for- 
giving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave 
you.’ Gracious influences flow into the Christian 
life that are beyond our tracing, though they all 
go back to the beauty of divine holiness in Christ. 
When Wordsworth revisited Tintern Abbey after 
five years, he discovered his debt to the influence 
of the landscape’s beauty upon his thought and 
conduct—not only the conscious debt of refresh- 
ment through the memory of the scene, “in lonely 
rooms, and ’mid the din of towns and cities,” but 
also the feelings of unremembered pleasure, 
‘‘such, perhaps, 

As have no slight or trivial influence 

On that best portion of a good man’s life, 

His little, nameless, unremembered acts 

Of kindness and of love.”’ 
164 


REV. H. WHEELER ROBINSON 


The Gospel of the forgiving grace of God is our 
one comfort when we are overwhelmed by the 
discovery of our own ungraciousness. ‘‘ God shall 
forgive thee all but thy despair.” We are not to 
be so discouraged by the imperfection of our offering 
that we go away from the altar never to return. 
We are to put right what is wrong in our relation 
to our brother, and then come back with the added 
offering of penitence. We are to think the more 
about that forgiving love of the Father which is 
the source and inspiration of the forgiving spirit 
towards our brother. In the grace of God there 
is the sufficient ground of assurance that we shall 
at last be delivered from our own want of grace; 
that deliverance is salvation. So, when we kneel 
alone to pray the Lord’s Prayer, and come to the 
words, “Forgive us... as we forgive,” let us 
sometimes stop praying and begin thinking, till 
holy thought itself becomes a prayer. 









a 
Dy 


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, : coe 
COM ear aint a tis | 
Mi TARA be eee 








P pe : 
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Rev. T. CHARLES WILLIAMS, M.A., D.D. 


THE REV. THOMAS CHARLES 
WILLIAMS, M.A., D.D. 


MrnistER of the Welsh Presbyterian Church, 
Menai Bridge. Son of the Rev. Hugh Williams, 
and grandson of the late Rev. John Charles, 
Gwalchmai, Anglesey. The family have been 
‘ministers from father to son for over 100 years. 
He was educated at Oswestry High School; Bala 
College; Aberystwyth University College; and 
Jesus College, Oxford. He graduated in Honours 
in 1898. Was brought up to the ministry, settled 
in Menai Bridge when he left Oxford, and in 
spite of calls to English and Welsh Churches in 
the big towns has remained there, but travels 
extensively both in this country and in America. 
He often preaches in London in Welsh, and in 
the leading English churches. He was Chaplain 
to the 6th Batt. R.W.F.; Secretary to the General 
Assembly, 1913-14, and a member of the Welsh 
Theological Board; Moderator of North Wales 
Presbyterian Synod, 1918-19; Moderator of the 
General Assembly, 1921-22. D.D. of Edinburgh 
University in 1923. 


THE GAW ORO EIBER TY 
Rev. ‘T. Cuartes Wituams, M.A., D.D. 


‘“ Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty 
and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful 
hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be 
blessed in his deed.”’ St. James i, 25. 


THE criticism usually made on this Epistle of St. 
James is that it does not contain a definite and 
adequate presentation of the Gospel. The value 
and point of its ethical teaching is readily and 
generally recognised, though perhaps even in that 
respect it would not be unnatural to inquire whether 
there is any real advance here on what would be 
expected, or found, in the Old Testament Prophets. 
What more, for example, do we find in St. James 
than in Amos? There is but scant reference in this 
Epistle at all to our Lord, and no teaching on the 
significance of His death in its relation to faith and 
the forgiveness of sin. We miss, in fact, what in 
St. Paul’s letters would be described as a Gospel. 
Is it in a true sense a religion that is taught here, 
or mere morality? In consequence of such con- 
siderations many devout and learned men were 
driven to agree with Luther’s classic condemnation, 
and gravely doubted whether the Epistle was, in 
any true sense, a contribution that had a right in 

169 


THE LAW OF LIBERTY 


the Sacred Canon. But surely this true disciple 
of Christ and this great student of his teaching, 
this man so saturated with the Master’s very 
phraseology, was not, even at so early a date, 
without a definite evangelical vision. He was 
clearly a man of considerable learning, particularly 
in the Wisdom Literature of his own nation. 

But had he a.Gospel? This is a most important 
issue for the Church of our own time. The supreme 
question for us to-day is, have we anything to tell 
the world which it does not know already, or which 
at least it could not have discovered without our 
aid? Is a sermon merely a leading article, with 
the Benediction at the end? Is the Gospel just 
another chapter, and at best an incomplete one, in 
human philosophy, or have we something for 
which we are not of our own selves responsible— 
something we have “received of the Lord,” a 
sacred deposit of truth to be grasped by faith, 
realised in experience and proclaimed openly as 
a Gospel? The soul of the Church is this gift 
of a Gospel. It is the only essential thing, but 
often the thing lacking. In theological opinion 
and ecclesiastical order the Churches are seemingly 
as far apart as ever. We draw nearer to one another 
only as we draw nearer to the heart of our spiritual 
message. Unity can never be reached if it is set 
before the mind as a definite object to be sought. 
If we concentrate on the Gospel, it will come 
naturally and unobserved as a by-product. The 
modern Church is supposed to possess a certain 
170 


REV. THOMAS CHARLES WILLIAMS 


gift for Church order, but our virtue may become 
our peril. We may be lost in our own schemes. 
As you are aware, the general law in every great 
movement is for the original idea which gave it 
being to crystallise in time into an organisation, 
which in turn always tends to attack and destroy 
the idea which gave it being. For that reason 
there must come at times a revolution in a State, 
and a revival in a Church to set free the living soul. 
Here in this verse we find a great Gospel in the 
revelation it contains, the obedience it demands, and 
the perfection of which tt 1s the only guarantee. 


I 


First, then, take the Gospel as presented here 
in the revelation it contains. It is the ‘“ perfect 
law of liberty.”” This great phrase must refer to 
the Christian doctrine and Gospel. It cannot be 
applied to anything which can be found in the 
Old Testament, nor in the great thinking of the 
classical eras. Had St. James done nothing but, 
by the grace of the Spirit, give this description 
of the Gospel, his contribution would have been 
considerable. It is one of the great phrases of 
Christian literature, not found elsewhere at all, 
here, as you remember, found twice. It may even 
be originally one of our Lord’s own, treasured in the 
mind of his devoted hearer. 


172 


THE LAW OF LIBERTY 


The Apostle evidently was a Jew, and to the 
Jewish mind the highest and ruling concept was 
that of law; not natural law, of which the Greeks 
and the modern world have known more, nor 
common public law in which the Romans were 
experts, but a moral and spiritual law existing in 
and revealed by the moral mind of God. This 
Jewish brain is the most wonderful phenomenon 
in the intellectual history of humanity. To the 
Jew, of ages long past, we owe practically all our 
moral ideas. Salvation is of the Jews. Other 
nations have also a great tradition for intellectual 
distinction, but their creative power has long since 
evaporated. They live only by the works of their 
past ; but the Jew to-day as a living force dominates 
the economic life of the world. Was it not said 
by someone who knew, that twelve Jews could 
even have stopped the war? What commerce 
means for the Jew to-day, moral idealism meant 
once. No greater thing therefore could at that 
time be said by a Jew of anything than that it 
was a “ perfect law.”’ 

And it would be well for us to reflect that the 
Gospel is a law, and the highest of all laws. The 
Gospel, it must be admitted, has certain definite 
characteristics which tend, when superficially re-. 
garded, to lead us to think that so far from being 
any kind of law at all, it stands for the sudden inter- 
ventions and the gracious irregularities of God. 
As illustrations of this, we may mention the place 
it gives to miracles in the natural sphere, and to 
172 


REV. THOMAS CHARLES WILLIAMS 


the forgiveness of sins in moral experience. Both 
these things are essential to the New Testament 
conception of a Gospel, and it is beyond our power 
at present to harmonise either with physical or 
moral law. St. Paul says that ‘‘ we know in part ” ; 
he might have put it that we know “in parts.” 
We know in sections; the modern tendency is to 
specialisation. It is often necessary to remind 
scientific men that the material universe, which 
they study, is not the whole of reality. A scientific 
man may well exclaim that miracles are not pro- 
vided, or accounted for, in his department, but 
then his department is not all there is. We are 
as yet but on the march, and the word miracle is 
one of the passing expressions of our intellectual 
pilgrimage. It will one day die out of the language, 
when we will have arrived at that great synthesis, 
which will both include and explain these mysteries, 
and we shall find, as Browning said, that all is 
love and yet all is law. 

Of this law the Apostle says two suggestive 
things; and the first is that it is a “Law of 
Liberty.” This is both arresting and daring. It 
strikes us at once as a challenging contradiction, 
Is not law the very negation of liberty? Can 
there be liberty if there is law? It has taken the 
world a long time to learn that it is bad law, not 
law in itself, that threatens human liberty. A 
‘‘ perfect ”’ law in all the realms of human experience 
is the indispensable safeguard of liberty both of 
action and thought. In every moral act there must 


173 


THE LAW OF LIBERTY 


be these two aspects—a law fixed, definite, un- 
changing, defiant, imperative, which will brook no 
disobedience—and yet, at the same time, every 
moral act must be the free, full self-expression of 
personality. There is no real worth morally in 
doing anything because we are commanded to do 
it, even when we are commanded by God. The. 
heart of morality is freedom. It is also, we are 
told here, a ‘‘ perfect’? law. By that we are to 
understand that the Gospel is final and ultimate, 
not an interim arrangement like the Old Testament 
dispensation. It is God’s last word, because there 
is no more to be said. The Gospel exhausts the © 
infinite mind of God, because it is centred in the 
Son of God made man. It is the saving interven- 
tion of the Highest in our affairs, and is the ground 
of our undying hope. The proclamation of this 
stupendous message faithfully is the one great con- 
cern of the Christian Church. It was by this the 
Church started; it is only by this it can triumph. 
To neglect this will involve the inevitable relapse 
of the Church to Judaism and to paganism. 


I] 


Then comes the obedience which such a Gospel 
demands. If God approaches man so majestically, 
how ought He to be received? What adequate 
‘Tesponse can man give? Nature in her full glory 


174 


REV.. THOMAS CHARLES WILLIAMS 


cannot be compared for simple, impressive majesty 
to the approach of God in His grace for the moral 
redemption of man. Our response is to “ listen.”’ 
Religion does not begin in the human playing upon 
the Divine, but in God speaking first to the soul, 
and securing the full attention of his total 
personality. 

The wonderful discoveries of our time would 
surely paralyse us if we had a little more imagina- 
tion. You pass a small cottage in the quietness 
and obscurity of the distant country, and when 
you enter you will find an old man probably there 
alone absorbed in “‘listening”’ to a concert held 
in London or in Paris. It is all carried to him there, 
he has only to attend. God too is speaking all the 
time ; though such are the preoccupations of our 
day that we pay but little heed. This true attention 
of the soul, this listening to God, is for us who 
minister in holy things the true equipment for our 
work. We must learn to be “ quick to listen and 
slow to talk.”” The apostle must, to begin with, be 
a disciple, and he must continue to be a disciple 
all the way. We listen too little and talk too much ; 
we read too much and pray too little. We must 
learn to retire oftener through prayer and medita- 
tion into the inner solitudes and silences of God. 
In that silence God speaks. 

We are told here, further, of two kinds of 
“listening.’’ There is the listening to forget, and 
the listening to obey. At times certain superficial 
evaporating impressions are made upon the mind, 


175 


THE LAW OF LIBERTY 


a passing emotion which leads to nothing. The 
Gospel is too great to be treated in that shallow 
way. It is spiritual discourtesy, and harms the 
soul. You will note the Apostle’s striking illustra- 
tion to emphasise this. ‘“‘ For whoever listens, and 
does nothing, is like a man who glances at his 
natural face in a mirror.” It may not, I admit, be 
the chief point in the words, but there is here a 
suggestive secondary implication. No one ever 
goes to the glass to see anyone but himself. He 
looks through the window to see a friend who 
may be passing, he goes to the album to recall a 
half-forgotten face; but no one goes to the mirror 
for anything but to see himself; great would be 
_his fright if he did see anyone else there! That 
is how a man should come to God’s Gospel—to get 
an honest portrait of his soul. We are becoming 
strangers to ourselves. When next you go to 
Church, do not worry as to how the minister 
preached; ask your soul how did you attend. 
There are certain moods of the mind even in God’s 
holy sanctuary in which a man is proof to all appeals. 
“So clear away all the foul rank growth of malice, 
and make a soil of modesty for the Word.” 

In further explanation of what is meant by this 
listening to obey, the Apostle employs three im- 
pressive words: “look,” “continue” and “do.” 
‘““Whoso looketh ’’—not a casual glance but as a 
man face to face with an overwhelming vision 
which silences and stuns the soul. If we have not 
seen spiritual fact in that way, we have in reality 
176 


REV. THOMAS CHARLES WILLIAMS 


seen nothing. In this mystic contemplation we 
must “continue.” It is not to be an occasional 
inspiration, but a fixed attitude of soul. It has 
always to be kept up. To rejoice is often easy ; it 
is, however, hard to rejoice always. To pray is 
often a relief, but it is difficult to do it without 
ceasing. For many things man is promptly thankful, 
but how about being thankful in all things? And 
it is to end in practice, which is the spirit and 
purpose of all true faith. “Act on the Word” 
instead of merely “listening to it.’ There is 
nothing more devastating to the soul than waves 
of artificial emotion without any corresponding 
practical result. We are called to translate the 
thought of God as expressed in his Gospel of grace 
into the prose of our own life, and so be made worthy 
of it. 


{il 


Finally we have the perfection of which all this 
1s our only guarantee. ‘‘ This man shall be blessed 
in his deed’’—not this man among others, and 
not this man even chief of all, but this man alone— 
he and no other. And to be “ blessed ”’ in the sense 
here meant includes more than a sense of outward 
well-being due to favourable circumstance; it 
means that all the deep elemental powers of the 
soul have been discovered and thrilled, and brought 
into full touch with their native environment in 


177 


THE LAW OF LIBERTY 


God. Religion is essentially an intensifying power 
in the soul. It makes the whole man awake and 
hungry for God ; and not God in nature or philosophy 
but the Personal God of grace in Christ. The sphere 
of this bliss will be service. ‘“‘ He will be blessed 
in his activity.”” We have not done well by giving 
so much prominence to the soothing idea of a final 
rest. Have you ever thought—you must have 
thought—about the use which God is going to 
make of the Perfect Church created, disciplined, 
saved and made perfect by the Gospel? This 
glorified Church will be the absolutely perfect 
instrument for carrying out the moral will of God. 
The angels have not our experience; they are the 
servants who cannot understand all their Lord 
intends. Is this Church saved at such a cost to be 
dismissed immediately, at their one first meeting 
together, and sent to lounge for ever on the garden 
seats in Paradise, touching a harp occasionally if 
not too exhausted, and do nothing further for God 
or men for ever more? Can that be regarded as 
a worthy destiny for man? Rather we should 
think of this life as a short introductory chapter 
in a book to be eternally written. The gracious 
programme of God remains to be for ever carried 
out, and we are to lose and find ourselves in His 
eternal service. Man can only be truly blessed in 
his deed. 

Brethren, you have listened to me very patiently. 
May I again with all the earnestness I can command 
plead with you to be loyal to this mighty Gospel ? 


178 


REV. THOMAS CHARLES WILLIAMS 


All else is secondary. It has been said that some 
of us in the holy ministry turn to social questions 
because we have lost our hold on the everlasting 
Gospel. The Dean of St. Paul’s said not long ago, 
“What is wrong with the Church is, the clergy 
have turned their attention from the unconverted 
to the unemployed.” You may not like that 
remark ; if so, you will have to write to the Dean. 
But before you write anywhere, give a thought 
to the solemn warning it suggests. God forbid 
that in a Christian pulpit any man should speak of 
the sufferings of our time but with tears of genuine 
sympathy. Yet the supreme tragedy after all is 
not that men should be without work—terrible as 
that is—but that man should be without God. 
The sad world, however, is gradually getting tired 
of its own pleasures, though it has little patience 
with our endless and often senseless squabbles. 
The field appears on all hands to be wonderfully 
ready for the harvest. Our age, which is in many 
respects the greatest in all history, is hungering for 
a simple, strong, sustaining and comforting Gospel 
preached, it may be, without much elegance or 
eloquence, but with convincing sincerity. This 
Gospel, which we have, we must hold and proclaim 
to the world with that tender catholicity of practical 
appeal which becomes a law of liberty so charged 
with the all-embracing love of God. 





Rev. JOHN WADDELL, M.A. 


THE REV. JOHN WADDELL, M.A. 


MINISTER of Fisherwick Church, Belfast. 
Third son of the Rev. John Waddell, B.A., of 
Newington Church, Belfast, and of Mary, daughter 
of the Rev. Robert Anderson, Banbridge, Co. 
Down. Married Esther, daughter of the Rev. R. J. 
Morrell, Bangor, Co. Down. Educated at Royal 
Academy, Belfast; Queen’s University, Belfast ; 
and the Presbyterian Theological College, Belfast. 
Twice Exhibitioner at Intermediate Exam- 
inations of Ireland, three times Exhibitioner in 
Royal University of Ireland; Scholar of Royal 
University and of Queen’s College in Ancient 
Classics. Graduated B.A. and subsequently M.A. 
in Queen’s University. Three times Scholar in the 
Presbyterian College ; Smiley Medallist in Oratory, 
Magill Bursar for Pulpit Eloquence. First holder 
of the Leitch Post-Graduate Prize of £100 in the 
Greek New Testament. Minister of the First 
Presbyterian Church, Bangor, Co. Down, 1902-14 ; 
of Egremont Church, Wallasey, Cheshire, 1914- 
1920; and of Fisherwick Church, Belfast, since 
1920. Author of ‘‘ The Life Here and the Life 
Hereafter.’’ Convenor of the General Assembly’s 
Committee on Church Work in Belfast. 


RELIGION IS LIFE 
Rev. Joun Wanppett, M.A. 


“Go, stand, and speak in the temple to the 
people all the words of this life.’ Acts v, 20. 


I WANT to lay the emphasis on the words “this 
Life.” It was a revolutionary description of 
religion. There is much in Christianity which 
cannot be called new. Many things in other 
philosophies and faiths of the ancient world were 
true and beautiful, before Christ was born. A 
great deal, therefore, had necessarily been antici- 
pated, and the Christian code was not entirely a 
novel revelation, but what Christianity brought 
into the world for the first time was the thought 
of religion as a life. The Greek schools had made 
men familiar with the idea of a philosophy to be 
accepted. When Paul preached in Athens he 
found a people there satiated with the pursuit of 
abstract truth, trying to stimulate their jaded 
appetites with futile searching after some new 
thing. Their failure and despair were due to their 
divorcing truth from life—a mistake which leaves 
men helpless in face of the buffetings of time and 
fate—and they acknowledged their ill-success by 
erecting an altar to the unknown god. In the 
same city, and in every Grecian community, there 

N 183 


RELIGION IS LIFE 


had sprung into existence as a protest against such 
vain philosophising a new religion of ritual and 
ecstasy combined—the cults into which men and 
women were solemnly initiated, and which practised 
a popular fellowship of feasts and mystic observance. 
These did much to pave the way for Christianity 
by their levelling of social distinctions and their 
promotion of easy comradeship, but they were not, 
any more than the Academic Schools, a real religion. 
From his early days in Tarsus also Paul had been 
familiar with religion as the observance of a code. 
His orthodoxy had been unblemished, and he had 
striven to keep the Divinest law which the world 
knew till Jesus came. But the record of his failure 
and the weakness of the law itself is written with 
a mordant pen in that terrible seventh chapter of 
his Epistle to the Romans. Philosophy, ritual, 
orthodoxy, alike fall short of essential religion. 
Religion is life—that is the new and _ startling 
announcement of New Testament preaching, an 
announcement which revolutionised the ancient 
world. Is it not true, that we require to lay the 
emphasis in these days also upon this great fact ¢ 
If Christianity is to any extent losing its hold upon 
men and women in the twentieth century, it is just 
because we allow it to be identified with codes or 
rituals or philosophies, and divorce it from life. 
For life is what men and women are supremely 
interested in, and religion must touch the central 
things, if it is to win its way and lay hold upon the 
human heart. Thought may be the basis of life, 
184 


REV. JOHN WADDELL 


but thought must find expression in will and action, 
before it becomes life. Life is movement, or as 
someone has put it: ‘‘ Life is what we are alive to.”’ 
That is why life is so poor a thing to many, because 
they are alive only to money and the main chance 
and their own selfish interests and gratification of 
the senses. Religion is life in a higher sense. It 
is love and beauty and sonship with God. Not 
things, but the meaning of things. Not position, 
but service. Not acquisitiveness, but the exercise 
of all our capacities in the mastery of the material 
and the use of the spiritual. As the psychologists 
say: “We learn things by expressing them.” 
Religion is life. 

Now, the life which Christianity preached as the 
essence of true religion, might, I think, be summed 
up under three heads—a new spirit, a new conduct, 
and a new power. The people of the ancient world 
had fallen into despair. Their religions could not 
inspire them, and the more noble-hearted men and 
women were, the more they felt their hopelessness. 
Suicide had become almost an inevitable end for the 
virtuous man. The light of expectation had gone | 
out. The early exponents of Christianity impressed 
the pagan world, perhaps most of all, by the lustre 
of hope which shone from their faces and illumined 
their lives. No philosopher had ever spoken of 
God as the God of hope, or suggested that religion 
could fill men with joy. But Christianity did not 
merely teach this new spirit ; it produced it. Walter 
Pater in one of his books tells of a lad in the days 

185 


RELIGION IS LIFE 


of the Roman Empire, who was attracted to a 
young soldier he had casually met, “ because of a 
certain something in his life, which drew him 
strangely and touched a deep chord in his soul. 
He found it difficult to explain. It was like a 
fragrance, a delicate perfume. It was like the 
shining of a very beautiful light. It touched and 
moved his very soul. It made him wonder. As 
they drew close together, he asked what it was, 
and he found that this soldier lad was a Christian, 
and bit by bit, in spite of his superstition, he too 
was drawn to Christ.” It was this new spirit 
which Christianity mysteriously put within men 
that sent them forth to be a power in the world. 
If we had more of it in these days, it would not so 
commonly be claimed that many who stand outside 
the Church are just as fully Christian as those 
within. There would be an unmistakeable quality 
and accent in the faith of those who belong to 
Christ, a victorious hopefulness, which would 
differentiate them from those who live on a merely 
material plane. The late Lord Morley, of all famous 
men who in a Christian land have held aloof from 
Christianity, was perhaps the best example of a pure 
and lofty character. How did he stand in respect 
of this distinctively Christian spirit of hopefulness 
when faced with a supreme test? Readers of his 
“Recollections’’ feel that “a cloud of sadness 
deepening into gloom toward its close hangs over 
his life record.” The war was a set-back to all his 
traditions, and there is not a gleam of hopefulness 
186 


REV. JOHN WADDELL 


in his later writings that the horrors of those terrible 
years might be the birth pangs of a better order. 
The same catastrophe overwhelmed Andrew 
Carnegie, who had built his hopes for the world 
on the pinnacle of a temple of peace to be erected 
by statesmanship and money. The war shattered 
that dream, and he had no higher hope to fall back 
on. “ Henceforth,’ writes his widow, ‘he was 
never able to interest himself in private affairs 
again. He died of a broken heart.’’ What a 
contrast are such examples of modern culture and 
modern paganism to the stalwart hope of the early 
Christians, face to face with a tyranny worse than 
Germany’s, and a corruption more putrid than 
even that of modern civilisation in Europe. The 
new spirit of Christianity is one which makes life 
seem worth while. People talk sometimes as 
though Christianity were simply a system which 
inculcates hope for the world to come. Because 
this world is so full of wretchedness there must be 
another, where the balance will be redressed. The 
very opposite is the case. Heaven is not a compen- 
sation, but a development. Because this world is 
so glorious, therefore the glory of heaven must be 
surpassing and unspeakable. That is the Gospel 
of Paul and the early Christian Church. Life is 
infinitely worth while here as well as_ hereafter. 
Don't forget that all the daringly optimistic things 
in the New Testament were written by men living 
under far worse conditions than we, by men in the 
grasp of a brutal oppressor, men who were exiles, 

187 


RELIGION IS LIFE 


prisoners, martyrs, but who had caught from their 
Master a new courage and an unquenchable hope. 
One is amazed often to find on what flimsy grounds 
the modern Christian is willing to abandon his 
faith—what a little thing is allowed to block his 
vision. Someone he has trusted betrays him, and 
so he flings his religion overboard. An employer 
who professes to be a Christian has ill-treated him, 
and so he will not go to Church. A fellow-member 
of the congregation has cold-shouldered him, and 
so he will have nothing more to do with Christ. 
Business reverses come upon him which he feels 
he has not deserved, and he sacrifices his faith and 
hope. Ah, brethren, we need to get out of these 
petty rocks and shoals into the deep sea. You have 
seen a vessel lying at anchor in the calm of a summer 
day. A few hours afterwards, storm sweeps down 
on the bay and the wind blows dead on shore, 
The wise captain will not stay there. He will weigh 
anchor and steam out to sea. He will not trust 
the cables in the narrow waters when the storm- 
wind blows and strains their feeble strength. The 
only place of safety is the open sea. It is so with 
our religion. Mechanical attachments to Christ, 
the cords of convention, the narrow seas of an easy 
surface faith are useless when the storm is up. We 
must move out into that wide ocean of God’s love 
and care, on which the early Christians rested, 
when with undaunted breasts they faced a world in 
arms and won it for Jesus Christ. Religion is a 
big thing—a thing that makes life seem gloriously 
188 


REV. JOHN WADDELL 


worth while—a thing that renders a man oblivious 
to petty insults and victorious over great trials, 
saved by an unconquerable hope. 

But further this new spirit evinces itself in a new 
conduct. It is not merely the observing of rules ; 
it is the living of a life. Feelings are not enough. 
They must be expressed in life. Love feeds on the 
expression of love. Someone has said: “ Despair 
has three heads: agnosticism, which makes the 
pilgrim lose courage in the pursuit of knowledge ; 
pessimism, which makes him lose courage in the 
strife for progress ; cynicism, which makes him lose 
courage in the search for virtue.” We have seen 
something of how pessimism can be routed by 
Christian hope. Let us now consider how cynicism 
can be conquered by Christian holiness. Since it 
became popular to say: ‘‘ Does it matter what a 
man believes?’ people have soon learnt to ask: 
“ Does it matter what a man does? ”’ It is inevitable, 
we are told, that nations should fight ; it is the law 
of nature that men should be impure; and so 
nothing can put a stop to the holocausts of men 
and women offered on the cruel altars of war and 
lust. Business is business, we are assured; there 
is no room for sentiment. Men must live, and short 
cuts are allowable. The rapacity of the rich is to 
be matched by the envy of the poor ; and all classes 
must be left to struggle blindly and selfishly for 
place and power and profit and ease. The goods of 
life are these tangible material things, and in com- 
parison with them, honour, truth, love, service, 

189 


RELIGION IS LIFE 


are of small account. That is the cynic’s creed. 
Are we to sink in the mire of acquiescence with 
a view of life like that? Are we to be content with 
a religion no better than the philosophy of Samuel 
Smiles—a smug satisfaction in self-help and self- 
gratification? Is that life at all, or mere animal 
existence? It is certainly not the Christian way— 
the way of service. Christianity is something 
higher and purer, nobler and more positive, than 
the life even of the decent fellow, who spends his 
allotted span in getting (as one prominent man 
expressed it) “as much happiness out of life as 
he can without interfering too much with the 
happiness of other people.” Christianity takes a 
far higher view of life than that. You bring a 
child into an engine house and turn a screw there. 
The child thinks only of the tiny screw and the 
hand he sees turning it as twisting a little piece of 
brass. But the engineer knows, that this turning 
of the screw is setting free the imprisoned steam 
that will drive machinery of incalculable power. 
That is an illustration of the two ways in which we 
may look at human life. We may see it childishly 
as so many little acts of small significance. A 
business is the taking of a partner, the selling of 
goods, the search for fortune—nothing more. But 
to the enlightened eye it is the opening up of oppor- 
tunities for God to work; the anvil on which 
character is hammered into shape; the window 
through which the everlasting light may shine; 
the avenue along which Christ may come to your 


190 


REV. JOHN WADDELL 


soul, or through you to some fellow man. What a 
strange dignity and interest it would lend to all 
our common life if we regarded it as the means 
whereby God works in us and through us for His own 
good pleasure! No single act or aspect of our daily 
business would be insignificant, all would have 
their true meaning in the point of operation which 
they give to God. Religion would become co- 
extensive with life—nay, it would be life itself— 
conduct, character, unselfish service. The world 
would cease to be a common place—still more, 
a place for frivolity or sin. The man could no 
longer live a mere surface existence ; for in a world 
with the depths and possibilities so opened up, to 
take a superficial view, and to reject the voice of 
God, speaking out of every circumstance and every 
situation, to conceive of life as nothing but the 
making of money and the eating of bread and the 
playing of games, would be seen in its true nature 
as a demoralising and a degrading thing. Professor 
Gilbert Murray puts the question in a pamphlet, 
what it was that sent so many of our young men 
out to the front at the beginning of the war with 
an extraordinary elation and readiness of spirit, and 
gives this answer: that for the average man to 
find something to do which he can do, and spend 
his whole life in doing, is the secret of a very high 
happiness. Therein lies the happiness of Chris- 
tianity, a great cause, a great Master, a great joy 

in service, and a great hope. 
I must compress our last point into a few words. 
IgI 


RELIGION IS LIFE 


The Christian religion is life, which manifests itself 
in a new power—the power to attain the ideals 
that it teaches. It was here that the ancient world 
failed. Philosophers could teach, but they could 
not give their scholars the strength to perform. 
The man who receives the hopeful spirit of Christ’s 
gospel into his heart has that within him which 
enables him to rise above the circumstances of life. 
Instead of clinging to the hope of a better world 
hereafter, because this world is hopelessly rotten and 
irremediably bad (which seems to be the doctrine 
of a writer like Dean Inge), he makes that better 
world his habitation here and now, setting up (as 
Matthew Arnold puts it in noble words) ‘a mark of 
everlasting light above the howling senses’ ebb and 
flow.” How is that possible? What is the motive 
power, and how does it take possession of a man’s 
soul? Go back to the early Church and you find 
it all plainly expressed in the records of those 
triumphant days: “ They went forth and preached 
everywhere, the Lord working with them.” Napoleon 
said once: “‘ When I was in my prime I could get 
thousands to follow me, but I had to be there.” Well, 
brethren, Christ is here and that is the motive 
power, Christ in you the Hope of glory—the hope 
of all life. The message of the Resurrection, on 
which Christianity stands, is just this, that Christ 
has been liberated from the bonds of space and 
time to become your Master, your Inspirer, your 
Strength, the Life of your soul. You say, how 
can | know that He is here. How can I feel His 
192 


REV. JOHN WADDELL 


power? ... Does He not speak in the ideals 
that attract us like the luminaries of the nightly 
sky; in the shame that wrings our consciences 
when we sin; in the indignation which fires our 
hearts when wrongs are done; in the sick longing 
for a higher life, which calls to the very meanest of 
us in our better moments, and impels us to stretch 
out lame hands to God? Give yourselves up to 
these impulses and longings; yield your hearts to 
these better feelings and convictions; and there 
will come to you, perhaps suddenly, perhaps gradu- 
ally, but as certainly as to-morrow’s sun will shine, 
the assurance, that Jesus Christ with all His power 
and grace and loveliness is your Redeemer and 
Friend. 


“Thanks be to Him, 
Who never is dishonoured in the spark 
He gave us from His fire of fires, and bade 
Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid, 
While that burns on, though all the rest grow 
dark.”’ 


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Rev. CANON VERNON F. STORR, M.A. 


THE REV. VERNON FAITHFULL 
STORK, M.A. 


CANON OF WESTMINSTER, and Examining Chaplain 
to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Canon 
Storr is the son of the late Edward Storr, Indian 
Civil Service, and of the late Emily Mary, daughter 
of Rev. James Faithfull, Vicar of Cheshunt. 
Educated at Clifton College, he became in 1888 
Scholar of Queen’s College, Oxford; and in 1895 
Fellow of University College, Oxford. Lecturer 
in the Philosophy of Religion, Cambridge 
University, 1904-7. Select Preacher at both 
Oxford and Cambridge. Was Canon Residentiary 
of Winchester, 1907-1916. Rector of Bramshott, 
1901-1906; of Headbourne Worthy, 1906-1910; 
of Bentley, 1916-1921. Among his publications 
are ‘‘ The Development of English Theology in the 
Nineteenth Century (1800-1860),” ‘‘ Christianity 
and Immortality,” ‘‘ Development and Divine 
Purpose,” ‘‘The Problem of the Cross,” ‘“‘ The 
Missionary Genius of the Bible,” and ‘‘ The 
Living God.” 


THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN 
DISCIPLESHIP 
Canon Vernon F. Storr, M.A. 


“ And as Jesus passed by from thence, he saw 
aman, called Matthew, sitting at the place of toll : 
and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, 
and followed him.” St. Matthew ix, 9. 


“Fottow me”; two words only in the appeal 
which Jesus made to this customs house officer, 
but those two words take us into the very heart of 
Christian discipleship. The essence of such dis- 
cipleship is loyalty to a Person, and, if we would 
appreciate its meaning, we must think in terms of 
friendship, companionship, obedience rendered in 
love, the mysterious power of attraction exercised 
by a dominating personality. God’s progressive 
revelation of Himself culminated in the coming of 
the Perfect Person. That Person has ever since 
remained central in the Christian system, and 
devotion to Him is the key to the Christian way 
of life. 

Christ’s purpose, so far as we can gather it from 
the Gospels, was to establish among men a Kingdom 
of God, or a society whose members were to live 
in fellowship together, ruling their lives by certain 
principles. This society was to grow with the 


197 


THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP 


centuries. In ideal it was co-extensive with 
humanity. Its influence was to permeate every 
department of life. All life was to be brought 
under the sway of the new redemptive forces with 
which the Kingdom was charged. Now it is 
interesting to observe the method adopted by Jesus 
for the execution of His purpose. He might have 
done something very different from what in actual 
fact He did do. For example, He might, like the 
founders of the American constitution, have mapped 
out in advance an elaborate organisation for the 
Christian society, which should govern all its future 
growth, giving detailed directions for its develop- 
ment. Or He might have prescribed for the 
citizens of the society a code of rules for the guidance 
of their conduct, such a code, for example, as had 
been drawn up by the Scribes. But He did neither 
of these things. I do not say that He provided no 
organisation at all for His society; but what He 
did in that direction was of the very simplest kind. 
He left His followers two sacraments, one of ad- 
mission into the society, the other a sacrament of 
fellowship; and He gave a commission to His 
disciples, “the eleven and they that were with 
them,’ to carry on His work. In our Lord’s mind 
questions of organisation were clearly of secondary 
importance. Nor did He leave His society without 
any instruction for daily living. But He gave 
them principles, not rules; principles which could 
be variously applied as the circumstances of the 
society changed in years to come. A rigid rule 
198 


REV. VERNON FAITHFULL STORR 


quickly becomes out of date; a principle may be 
deathless just because it admits of manifold applica- 
tions. Shall we ever outgrow the need for showing 
love and humility and self-sacrifice? What in 
point of fact Jesus did was to select twelve men 
and train them. He took them into close association 
with Himself, patiently taught them, became their 
Friend, and gradually led them into a ripening 
sympathy with His own ideals and interests. They 
began to catch some of His spirit, and we see them 
becoming more and more attracted by His Person- 
ality. The education of these men is a standing 
example of the truth that religion is “ caught,” not 
“taught.” To these men was given the task of 
spreading the new religion. Like a fire which, 
leaping from point to point, brightens as it burns, 
so the new teaching diffused itself because one man 
told another the good news, and personality kindled 
personality to see fresh visions and realise fresh 
possibilities of growth and service. 

The call which came to St. Matthew comes to 
each one of us to-day. Jesus Christ claims our 
individual loyalty and devotion. That call, heard 
first by a lakeside in Galilee, has echoed all down 
the centuries, losing none of its intensity with 
lapse of time; nay, gaining rather something in 
urgency, as life’s complexity deepens and humanity 
searches wistfully for some sure guidance. ‘“‘ Follow 
me.” But the reply comes, ‘‘ How can I follow one 
so far above me? He so flawless, I so sin-stained ! 
He so strong and perfect, I so weak! Is it not 


O | 199 


THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP 


mere mockery to set me in presence of this lofty 
ideal and expect me to reach it?” 

We may be sure that no word of mockery ever 
fell from the lips of Jesus; but the doubt of our 
questioner does send us to make further inquiry 
into the nature of the discipleship, whose essence 
we have defined as loyalty to a Person. This 
relationship between Master and disciple is a 
double relationship. There is the relation of 
the disciple to Jesus, and there is the relation 
of Jesus to the disciple. Let us consider each in 
turn. 

(x) The disciple is called to obedience and loyalty. 
Upon every life Jesus Christ makes a claim. No 
one, who has once really come face to face with 
Him, can be in quite the same position he was in 
before. He has seen something above him. He has 
heard a challenge. Henceforth life shows him two 
roads, one leading up to the mountain heights, 
the other down to the lower levels of the plain. 
Between them he has to choose. He may choose 
the lower road, as so many do; but even then there 
will come to him moments of regret and uneasiness, 
and an inner voice will accuse him of disloyalty. 
We cannot, then, evade the challenge, but it is 
fatally easy to underestimate its seriousness, There 
are thousands who make profession of following 
Jesus, yet who never really walk along the path of 
true discipleship. To register yourself as a Christian 
on a Church roll is not discipleship, neither is in- 
tellectual assent to the Christian creed. Disciple- 
200 


REV. VERNON FAITHFULL STORR 


ship is a matter of the will, of the heart, of the whole 
personality. 

The disciple is one who tries to reproduce in his 
own life the spirit of his Master, who tries to act 
in daily life as Jesus would have acted, who seeks 
to bring the whole of life under the control of the 
principles which made the life of Jesus the thing 
of eternal wonder that it is. Into such discipleship 
must enter the temper of self-sacrifice. There 
must be readiness to give up things for the Master 
and His cause, a glad acceptance of pain and 
suffering, a spending of self in the service of 
humanity. “If any man would come after me, 
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and 
follow me. For whosoever would save his life 
shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for 
my sake shall find it.”” Above all, there must be 
the daily fight for character, the war with tempta- 
tion, the recollection of the holiness without which 
no man shall see the Lord. Now all this means 
effort ; it means the calling into play of the will. 
In all true Christian discipleship is a note of moral 
urgency. And as the call to follow sounds in our 
ears the question comes, Of what nature is my 
following? How much real earnestness is there 
in my life of religion, how much giving up of 
that which costs me something? Am I grow- 
ing in likeness to Jesus Christ? Can I begin 
to see my way to the hope of being able one 
day (it may be in the far future) to say with 5t. 
Paul, ““I have been crucified with Christ; yet 

201 


THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP 


I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in 
me’? 

(2) But over against the relation of the disciple 
to the Master stands the Master’s relation to the 
disciple ; and to this we now turn. 

If we study the life of a man like St. Paul, if we 
seek from his writings to gather what was the secret 
of that life and what its main controlling impulse, 
we find that the Apostle felt himself to be the 
recipient of power from a Christ who was alive. 
Discipleship for him was a following of Christ, 
because Christ gave the power to follow. “In 
Christ ’’ is one of the commonest expressions in his — 
letters. It has different shades of meaning in the 
different places in which it is used, but the central 
idea conveyed by the phrase is that of communica- 
tion of life from a higher source. Union with the 
Living Christ is the key to St. Paul’s teaching and 
experience. His teaching flows out of his experience ; 
and his experience had proved to him that he was 
not left to fight his way through life alone, but that 
there went with him a Divine Companion, wiser, 
stronger, more loving than himself, whose Personality 
interpenetrated his own, and enabled him to do 
things which he could never have done unaided. 

Here, then, is the answer to the question, How 
can I hope to follow Christ? We can so hope 
because Christ gives us power. Life and power are 
the words which lie at the centre of Christianity. 
When Jesus came to earth there were many lecturers 
and teachers holding up beautiful ideals of life, 
202 


REV. VERNON FAITHFULL STORR 


but those who listened to them said despairingly, 
“We have no power to reach those heights.” On 
that “hard, pagan world” moral impotence was 
written plain. Life was for thousands a weary 
thing, without inspiration, with no sunlight to 
touch the clouds to diviner beauty. And into that 
world came Jesus, bringing a yet higher ideal of 
living, but telling men of a power of God which 
could help them to live up to it. Jesus revealed to 
this disillusioned world new springs of life, offered 
Himself to men as the source of spiritual energy, 
said that their Father in heaven loved them and 
was holding out to them hands full of blessing. 
From that day to this men have come to that 
fountain to receive the water of life, and have gone 
away refreshed and strengthened. 

If we want proof that Christ gives life and power 
we must turn to Christian experience. There is 
the record running through history like a line of 
light; there is the continuous testimony from 
every class of person that Christ exercises this 
transforming influence. This experience cannot be 
set aside as pious fancy or illusion. Illusions are 
not so persistent, nor do they make for sanity and 
balance of living. No; for an effect so remarkable 
we must postulate an adequate cause. The only 
adequate cause is a Christ who is to-day alive. 
Some of those whom Christ has healed were in the 
very lowest depths of degradation. But one day 
they somehow found out Jesus and came to Him 
utterly broken and ashamed. They gave Him their 


203 


THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP 


lives, seemingly worthless, perhaps almost feeling 
it an insult to offer Him such a gift. Andlo! He 
smiled on them and received them. Fresh power 
came into them, gradually the hold of sin upon 
them loosened, and now they are in Him “ new 
creatures.’ 

Jesus Christ has to-day the same power to redeem 
even the most abandoned criminal. But it is not 
only the criminal He saves. He can give to every 
life a new aim, a new centre, a new freshness. He 
can send us all out to our tasks with changed 
outlook, making us feel that it is worth while to 
put our very best energies into our work. He is the 
great character-builder, the great source of inspira- 
tion for all humanity. ‘“ Behold, I make all things 
new.” That voice from the throne is a challenge 
to the world to make proof of His renovating power. 

‘‘ Follow me,” then, means the giving of ourselves 
to One who just longs to help us, who is very patient 
with us, utterly tender, ready to forgive; yet 
strong with all the power of One who went through 
life without a sin, who fought death and conquered 
it, and now has all authority in earth and heaven, 
and holds His power that He may bestow it on us. 
Discipleship is the committal of ourselves to the 
keeping of the divine human Friend. 

A tree is known by its fruits, and such viele 
of ourselves to Christ will have its fruits in service 
for mankind. A selfish or self-centred Christian is 
a contradiction in terms. We follow One who came 
“not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” 


204 


REV. VERNON FAITHFULL STORR 


We find our true selves just in proportion as we 
seek to enter into wider relationships with our 
fellows. Here it is important to remember that 
the command “ Follow me” has nothing narrow 
about it. We can follow Christ in any sphere of 
life. Jesus always respected individuality. Part 
of His broad universality consists just in this, that 
He can meet the needs of our differing tempera- 
ments. Christ is ready to consecrate all human 
endeavour which is not sinful. “I am the Way,” 
said Jesus, and there is a splendid breadth about the 
saying, for His Way gathers up into itself all our 
lesser ways. Poet, engineer, man of science, trader, 
soldier—they can all be themselves and do their 
varied tasks, and yet all the while be true to Him. 
But if there is no real spirit of service, there is no 
real following along the Way. ‘‘ On the one hand,” 
wrote Dr. Hort in ‘‘ The Way, the Truth, the Life,” 
“ devotion to a person, human or divine, seems in 
our best moments the all in all of life. Yet it fades 
and becomes an unreality or a disease when it is 
not translated into wide and diffusive operation ; 
conversely all worlds of operation fatigue and 
desolate and come to vanity. In our finiteness we 
are driven to oscillate between the person and the 
world, whatever world it may be. But Christ's 
word exhibits them as meeting in Him. He, the 
most personal of persons, is also the dominating 

centre of every world.” 
Put that into simpler language and see what it 
means, It means first, that loyalty to Christ is 
205 


THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP 


no mere luxury of private emotion; it must show 
itself in service, or it will become like salt that has 
lost its savour. Secondly, it means that service 
without the inspiration which Christ gives, and 
without the aim which He supplies, will be in 
danger of becoming wearisome routine. But if we 
link our service to His Person and perform it in 
His name, and for His cause, then both work and 
worker will be transfigured. The work will be 
better done because upon the worker falls the 
benediction of His inspiring Personality. We give 
ourselves to Him; in response He gives Himself 
to us. We offer Him our service, unworthy though — 
it is, and He blesses it and makes it fruitful in 
ways beyond our ken. Day by day He sends us to 
our tasks with fresh hope and fresh courage, turning 
even our failures into the materials for future 
triumphs. 

“Follow me” is the story of our Christian pil- 
grimage on earth. Will the story of eternity be 
any other? Will not that other life be just a closer 
following of this everlasting Friend of man? 


3 


206 


Rev. H. R. L. SHEPPARD, M.A. 


THE REV. HUGH RICHARD LAWRIE 
SHEPPARD, M.A. 


Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Mr. Sheppard 
is the second son of the late Rev. Canon Edgar 
Sheppard. Educated at Marlborough, he passed 
on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He became 
Secretary’to the Bishop of Stepney, 1905 ; Cuddes- 
don College, 1906; Chaplain, Oxford House, 
1907; Deputy Priest-in-Ordinary to King 
Edward VII, and to King George V; Head of 
Oxford House, 1909-10; Chaplain of the Order 
of St. John of Jerusalem, 1910; Extra Private 
Chaplain to the Archbishop of York, 1911; 
Priest in Charge of St. Mary’s, Bourdon Street, 
and Grosvenor Chapel, S. Audley Street ; Chaplain 
of the Cavendish Club; Temporary Chaplain in 
France in 1914; Hon. Secretary of the Life and 
Liberty Movement; Select Preacher at Cambridge 
in 1921; Lecturer in Pastoral Theology at Cam- 
bridge, 1921; Proctor of the Diocese of London ; 
Hon. Chaplain to H.M. the King. Among his 
publications are: ‘“‘Two Days Before” (S.C.M.), 
1924, “The Human Parson,” 1924. He is also 
Editor of St. Martin’s Review. 


THE TEST OF FPAITH 
Rev. H. R. L. Suepparp, M.A. 


AN old year in pictures and cartoons is always 
depicted as going away to be unremembered and 
unloved; a new year as coming in full of hope. 
Punch had a cartoon to that effect recently. As 
I looked at it, I could not help finding myself caught 
under the subtle suggestion that everything had 
been all wrong last year, and that everything was 
going to be perfectly beautiful during 1926. Of 
course, neither of those suggestions is true. If good 
things are to dawn for us this year we must go out 
and fetch them in; the world will not get better 
because we hope it may. We will be full of hope, 
we will be full of courage; we will ask God that 
whatever may befall us this year, at least we shall 
not be found lacking either in hope or in courage ; 
but if brighter days are to dawn—and there is no 
reason whatsoever why they shouldn’t—we must 
get very busy. 

I want to ask you a series of questions. Do you 
want your country to be Christian, or do you not? 
Do you think that Christianity is really played out, 
and are you one who feels that Jesus is dead now 
long ago, and that He has nothing whatsoever to 
offer to life as it is to-day? Do you think, or do 
you not think, that if the principles that Christ 


209 


THE TEST OF FAITH 


taught were ruthlessly applied to human life things 
would get better? Does this Christianity have 
your vote? Would you will it to be true? And 
about Jesus Christ Himself—is He the nearest to 
God whom you’ve ever known or heard of ? Would 
you rather have Him as your God than anyone 
else in the Day of Judgment—if Day of Judgment 
there is to be—would you be judged by Jesus Christ, 
or would you prefer to be judged by some god of 
your own creation and fancy? We are still in 
name a Christian nation: do you wish us to be 
one in fact? Would you like your children to 
gtow up as real Christians, or would you prefer to. 
warn them against that old superstition? Is it 
our fault, or is it God’s fault, that Jesus is now so 
remote from our lives? When we did try to follow 
Him, were we better or were we worse ? 

There is only one way of testing the truth or 
the falsity of any creed, and that is by living it out 
and seeing what happens. Have we ever lived our 
faith out and seen what has happened? And if 
you answer, as some of you must, ‘“ Jesus Christ 
is dead now, let us find some other Saviour,” then 
say so frankly. The world needs a Saviour, and 
if you know someone who can save better than He 
can, then in God’s name let us know who. There 
is something fine in those who follow the star and 
go out into darkness not knowing where they go, 
seeking the truth, They may never come to the 
inn where the Child Jesus lies, but at least they are 
seekers after truth ; and if any of you who are seeking, 
210 


REV. H. R. L. SHEPPARD 


have found, for God’s sake tell us. We are still 
wanting a Saviour and we believe that Jesus Christ 
can be that Saviour, and we ask you not merely 
to tell us that our Christ is no Saviour but, if 
you can, to tell us someone who is stronger than He. 
There is nothing you can say in honesty that will 
shock. We wish the Faith we hold to meet every 
searchlight of reverent criticism. We believe it 
will emerge the stronger. But if you answer, as 
the vast majority of English people still would 
answer, ‘‘ Jesus Christ is the world’s Saviour,” if 
you can say in the words of the old hymn: 


“Thy touch has still its ancient power, 
No word from Thee can fruitless fall ; 
Hear, in this solemn evening hour, 
And in Thy mercy heal us all,” 


if that be your verdict, and I doubt not that it 1s 
the verdict of most of you, then surely it is time 
we really got busy taking ourselves and our own 
land back to our Saviour. It is time we claimed 
the habitable world for the Christ Whom we 
acknowledge. 


“ And that’s not done by song or sword or pen. 
There’s but one way—God make us better men.” 


“ Would to God,” once said an old Saint, “ that 
all cold-blooded, faint-hearted Christian soldiers of 
Christ would look again to Jesus and His love, and 

2II 


THE TEST OF FAITH 


when they look I would have them look yet again 
and fill themselves with the beholding of His 
beauty.” 

There is, you know, a crisis in religion to-day. 
Thank God that that is so. The only ages in 
history where there have been no crises have been 
the spiritually dead ages. Whenever the Spirit 
of God breathes upon the souls of men the effect 
is to awaken.a great religious crisis. The crisis 
to-day in religion turns around the question as to 
whether Jesus Christ shall be supreme in the life 
of organised Christianity. It sometimes looks as 
if the spirit of convention and ecclesiasticism were 
running Him close. As things are now, Jesus Christ 
is not really supreme. We have never quite known 
what to make of Jesus Christ. If He came again 
might not even the churches combine together to 
persecute Him as a dangerous fellow, subversive 
to all ecclesiastical law and doctrine? What kind 
of welcome do you suppose that He would have at 
the Vatican, in the National Assembly, or in Free 
Church gatherings? When He spoke of the values 
of God, how many would really listen, how many 
afterwards would dare to follow after Him, even 
at midnight, I wonder ? 

Many have long since lost faith in the Society 
of Jesus being able to do anything more than provide 
a little consolation for those who have fallen out of 
the race of life, or a series of Prayer Book services 
for those who are that way inclined. And some 
of those are not people who may be thought to 
212 


REV. H, R. L. SHEPPARD 


have their hearts hardened against God. Some of 
them care passionately for righteousness and truth 
and justice. Somehow the Christian religion in its 
long history has become entangled with a multitude 
of things that do not really belong to it, with a 
great deal too much dogma, with a great deal too 
much philosophy, with a great deal too much 
convention. We have taken the Christ out of 
the open air, and the world has not always been 
able to find Him where we have put Him, If you 
take Christianity along with its latter-day entangle- 
ments, encumbrances, unnatural alliances and its 
irrelevances, it is indeed hard to understand its 
divine and perfect simplicity. Sometimes good 
men find it a very perplexing thing. It has been 
said—though some may think it. foolish—it has 
been said that if all the theologians and ecclesi- 
astically-minded would only take themselves off, 
Christianity would have more disciples to-day. 

Let me say a word to you who sit outside and 
criticise all the time, for you are as much to blame 
as anyone else, you who have seen the light and 
do believe in Christ but can do nothing more 
gallant than criticise. Please accept the full blame 
yourself for what has happened to organised 
Christianity. The better mind of the nation cares 
little or nothing for the niceties of ecclesiastical 
order—it does care for Christ. It is tired of the 
barriers that the churches have built, not against 
anti-Christ, but against each other. It is not 
interested in exploring the situation as between 

213 


THE TEST OF FAITH 


ourselves and Rome or the Free Churches. What 
it really desires—and I am heart and soul with its 
desire—is not that we should explore the situation, 
but that we should act as if the situation had never 
arisen. This business of “‘ Safety First’ is no use 
to the Church of the living God. 

The world needs salvation badly. It is haunting 
the places where it thinks such salvation may be 
found. It is like someone who has lost his way and 
cannot find it. It badly needs salvation from a 
life of selfishness back into a life of love. Nothing 
can happen until the Supremacy of Christ and His 
teaching about God is assured. 

You do not hesitate to confess your love and 
devotion for Jesus Christ. Are you really honestly 
trying to make things better in His Name, or do 
you like merely to sit outside and laugh at us, at 
those who are trying within the Body of Christ to 
try and make things better and nobler, to try to 
make the Church of Christ—and there must be the 
Society of Christ—more passionate, more real, more 
sincere? It’s so easy to throw stones, so easy to 
criticise, so easy to be superior. Are you not ina 
rather contemptible position? Not hesitating to 
acknowledge Christ, you will not do a hand’s turn 
to help His Society to bring itself to life. 

I know full well the faults of those of us who are 
inside. Sometimes we do seem so to bind His arms 
to His side with our conventions and controversies, 
that are entirely irrelevant to the Gospel of Christ, 
that the Lord Himself cannot stretch out His hand 
214 


REV. H. R. L. SHEPPARD 


to heal the wounds of His people. It’s high time 
that you and we did a great deal better. It is high 
time we remembered that Christianity did not begin 
in argument but in a deed, in a deed that was 
‘done and in a Life that was lived. The propaganda 
of Christianity is as simple as this: ‘“ Follow Me,” 
“Go and do thou likewise.” 

The religious crisis and perplexity of to-day is 
caused because we will subordinate the thing done 
to the thing said. In the religion which Christ 
came to found upon the earth, something worth 
talking about was done before the talking began. 
Men will never be argued into the Kingdom of 
God; they can’t be, but they will always be led 
when they meet a real sincere Christian. You 
know of the man who said that he never quite 
understood Christianity but he had met it, and 
that is really the point. We have been devoted 
to our Lord in our speech, but never quite convinced 
that he was practical, never quite sure that a great 
movement run on His lines could be successful : 
never really alive to His genius, to His humanity, 
to His power. We have always gone on to the 
little path because we have been so afraid of tackling 
the great one; we have tried to keep Christianity 
alive in a parish hall, we have not dared to try it 
out in a public square. Jesus Christ did not care 
much for the local, He cared always for the 
universal. 

The great Church of Christ has not yet arrived, 
but it is on its way and it waits the warm hearts 

P 215 


THE TEST OF FAITH 


of you who love the Christ ; it needs you in it in 
order that it may really become passionate again. 
It can arrive if you will give to it your best, if 
you will care for it, if you will love it, if you will 
go and try and make it very real and very strong 
and very sincere. We have, as I have said, refused 
to take Jesus Christ seriously. We have not believed 
that He meant what He said and was able to fulfil 
His promises. Christianity began in a deed, and 
again it began in a friendship. He chose twelve 
that they might be with Him as His friends; He 
calls them by their name. It begins and it ends 
really in friendship with Jesus Christ. 

Do you know the story of an episode that took 
place in Manchester many years ago, when the 
Salvation Army first came into being? A Salvation 
Army lassie stood within the dock, charged by 
people who in those days thought Salvation Army 
work most disreputable and unseemly, with ob- 
structing a very broad highway; and there was a 
young magistrate sitting on the Bench called 
Crossley—whose name some of you may know— 
and as he saw this child witnessing to her Christ 
in the face of the dull, respectable people who 
were attacking her, he got up from the Bench, he 
left the Bench, and slowly he walked into the dock 
to be by her side. That is one of the best examples 
that I know of what Christ can do for the one who 
really tries in difficulty to befriend Christianity and 
to be by the side of Christ. I believe with my whole 
soul that He can come down and stand by us while 
216 


REV. H. R. L. SHEPPARD 


we make our defence, and give us power and inward 
peace in external turmoil. 

And you who are looking for a Faith, not that 
you will have to carry but that will carry you, I 
ask you to-night to follow your own highest ideals, 
to follow the highest star that you see in the heavens 
—the star of service, the star of truth, the star of 
justice, the star of righteousness—follow it even if 
you have not ever seen the Christ, follow it as 
hard as you can. Be true to your own best ideals 
and one day even if you do not find Christ He will 
find you. : 


‘“Q, young mariners, call your companions ; 
Launch your vessel and crowd your canvas, 
And ere it vanishes over the margin, 
After it, follow it, follow the gleam!” 


And I think if you dare to follow the gleam, you 
will ultimately come to the Christ. There are some 
days in history when the victory is only to the 
bold. Such a day is this. The Church that will 
not be bold and daring and adventurous has little 
to offer to a broken world to-day, and the man or 
the woman who won’t launch into the deep for the 
sake of ideals and dare with reverence to storm Heaven 
is of little service to a world that needs the salvation 
of its soul. 


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THE LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY 
Tue Rr. Rev, St. CLAIR G. DONALDSON, D.D., D.C.L. 


THE LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY 
(The Rt. Rev. St. Clair George Donaldson, 
DID DO. LL.) 


Dr. Donatpson is the son of Sir Stuart A. 
Donaldson, First Premier of New South Wales. 
He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, 
Cambridge, where he was Scholar, First Class 
Classicak and Theological Tripos. After being 
Curate of St. Andrew’s, Bethnal Green, and 
Resident Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury 
from 1888-1891, he was Head of the Eton Mission 
at Hackney Wick until 1900, when he became 
Rector of Hornsey and also Rural Dean of Hornsey 
in 1902 until 1904, when he went to Australia as 
Bishop of Brisbane, being made Archbishop in 
1905 on the formation of the Province of Queens- 
land. He was translated to the See of Salisbury 
in 1921. 


THE WORLD OF TO-MORROW 


Ture Lorp BisHop OF SALISBURY 


“ My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” 
| S. John v, 17. 


it 


Wuat is your idea of the origin and maintenance 
of the world? Obviously no more fundamental 
question could be asked of us. Our answer to 
such a question lies at the root of all our thoughts 
and all the shaping of our life: and yet the answer 
of most people is curiously vague and indefinite. 


~ What would be the common answer? You would 


say: “I believe in God, I believe God created the 
universe.” But that is a quite inadequate answer. 
God is merely a name that you give to the Unknow- 
able, and we must go on to ask—how did He make 
the world and what is His relation to it now? 
What then, I ask again, is your theory of the origin 
and maintenance of the world? Two theories in 
turn have held the minds of men. 

According to one theory, creation is a thing of 
the past. God created the world and then rested 
from His labours. This theory is illustrated by the 
watchmaker making a watch. He shapes the little 
gold wheels, he pieces them together, he fits the 

221 


THE WORLD OF TO-MORROW 


whole delicate machinery into its case, he winds 
the watch up and then his work is done. He is not 
called in again unless something goes wrong and 
he is asked to mend the watch. So men have 
believed about the universe. It is a great and 
delicate machine, and the Creator stands apart from 
His work and only intervenes when something is 
wrong. It was this view of creation and of God’s 
miraculous intervention which held the field in the 
last century, and was the subject of much controversy 
with men of science. 

But this theory is not in accordance with the 
teaching of Christ. According to Him, creation 
is not a thing of the past. It is a continous process. 
It does not consist in one original act followed by 
miraculous interventions: it is miraculous all the 
time. “ My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” 
This theory is illustrated by the analogy of a 
managing director in his factory. You may call 
the factory a machine, but it is a living machine. 
It owes its existence to the brain of the managing 
director; he conceived it, he wrought it out in 
concrete fact, and he works in it from day to day. 
He is the life and soul of it all. He is for ever 
devising new contrivances to expedite the work, 
He is ever introducing new machinery and scrapping 
the old. He is ever watching the market and 
adapting his output to the needs he sees. He is 
the life of the whole concern. It is not too much 
to say that he is creating the factory from day to 
day, and no one knows what sort of factory it will 
222 


THE LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY 


be to-morrow. That surely is the true theory of 
the universe. We Christians believe that this 
whole material universe, visible and invisible, is 
just nothing more or less than the expression of the 
mind and will of a Person. But that Person is not 
a mere workman who makes His work and leaves it. 
He is working in His great machine, while yet above 
it, as a managing director works his factory. He 
is creating the universe from day to day, and from 
moment to moment, and the world of to-morrow 
is not yet created. 

I am not sure that this thought is very commonly 
present to our minds. I am not sure that we have 
altogether shaken off the older, less scriptural 
view, but we ought to school ourselves to the idea, 
for all our life and action may be transfigured in 
the light of it. For we Christians do not stop there. 
It is not only that God is ever at work in creation. 
We are further taught in the New Testament to 
recognise the amazing and glorious fact that we 
men are called upon to co-operate with Him in the 
work—to be fellow-workers with Him, sharers in 
His creative power. That is what St. Paul tells 
us that we are—fellow-workers with God in the 
shaping of the future, in the creating of the world 
that is to be. 

I remember once, during my travels in Greece, 
watching a long line of workmen hoeing the land. 
As I saw them, they were the very centre of the 
landscape. Before them was the unkempt wilder- 
ness; behind them were cultivated fields and 

223 


THE WORLD OF TO-MORROW 


smiling pastures, and as the line of workmen advanced 
into the untilled land they were, so to speak, creating 
a new country—a country of cultivation and fruitful- 
ness in place of the untrodden waste. That line of 
workmen is a parable of each generation of men. 
Each generation stands for the moment in the 
centre of time. Behind it is history and experience 
and such achievements as men are able to show. 
Before it lies the unknown future. Each generation — 
is thus in some sense creating the world of to-morrow. 
It is an inspiring thought. It means that the — 
Infinite Source of all things has so far parted with 
His omnipotence as to give us freedom of will and 
desire. It is His Will that we should in some sense 
share in His creative power. The world of to- 
morrow is not yet created. What kind of world 
it is to be depends in some sense upon what we 
in our generation think and work for and desire. 


Il 


What do we want? What in point of actual 
fact are the desires and aspirations of our generation, 
for what we aspire to and desire to-day will be 
realised to-morrow? If, therefore, the prevailing 
note of our time is the love of pleasure, if what we 
want above all things in the world is to have a 
good time, or to make money, or to gain power for 
our nation, then we shall presently either achieve 
224 


THE LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY 


these things or, through the clash of our desires 
with those of our fellow-men, we shall precipitate 
trouble. 

But what if we all truly and honestly desire the 
peace of the world before anything else, if we truly 
and honestly desire above anything else the greatest 
happiness of the greatest number of our fellow-men, 
and the conquest of sorrow and suffering ; if, in a 
word, we all truly and honestly desire above every- 
thing the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ— 
who knows what a mighty and glorious renaissance 
might be seen in the next generation. As we look 
out on the world of to-day, we see much confusion 
and bewilderment, new movements surging up to 
the surface all over the world, and forces gathering 
head beyond man’s power to control. These forces 
are not evil, they are not incapable of being har- 
monised. It is possible that they may all be 
bridled and harnessed to the great chariot of the 
world’s progress, but if this is to be, we must train 
and discipline our desires, What we desire to-day 
will be realised to-morrow, and if we desire above all 
else the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ, 
then we shall wield the power capable of controlling 
the world. ‘‘ Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and 
His righteousness, and all these things shall be 
added unto you.” The world of to-morrow is not 
yet created. What sort of world it is to be depends 
on us of this generation. 


225 


THE WORLD OF TO-MORROW 


Ill 


But let us contract our gaze and turn from the 
world at large to the individual life. Here, too, 
we are called upon to be creators. In your life and 
mine the future is still unknown, and each of us is 
shaping that future with creative power to-day. 

What we are to-day is the result of what we have 
thought and desired and striven after in the past. 
In like manner, what we shall be to-morrow is in 
no way fixed or pre-ordained. It depends on what 
we are desiring and deciding to-day. I do not 
deny that our desires and decisions of to-day may 
be warped and hampered by the habits and associ- 
ations of the past, but we must never let go the fact 
that we are free and that we can shape our life 
to-morrow as we will. Here again the thought 
is difficult for us. It is hard for one who is under 
the thraldom of an evil habit to believe after ten 
thousand failures in the past that to-day his resolve 
marks a new epoch, that indeed he can remake his 
life anew. It is hard, and I dare not say that there 
may not be instances where the sinful soul is gripped 
by fetters from which it cannot escape; but if 
that be so it is not God’s Will. God has made us 
free. He has made us to co-operate with Him in 
the shaping of our life and in the perfecting of our 
character. That is what we meant when we learnt 
long ago in our Catechism to “ believe in God the 
Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me and all the elect 
people of God.” Yes, our Lord’s words are true of 
226 


THE LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY 


your life and mine, as of the world at large. “ My 
Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” It is His 
Will to create you to-morrow afresh in His Image. 
It is His Will that you should leave those things 
which are behind and reach out to Him, and He has 
given you power to co-operate with Him in the past. 
We do not know what may befall us to-morrow. 
There are sure to be tasks and sorrows and trials, 
but if we have indeed heard the voice of our great 
Fellow-Workman, if we are indeed minded to co- 
operate with Him, then all those things that are 
going to happen to-morrow are nothing but the 
factory in which the perfected article will be pro- 
duced. They are nothing but the laboratory in 
which, even if it be through pain, the purest essence 
will be distilled, the perfect fragrance of human 
character, to bless and enrich the world. 


227 


tae oh 


ve! Xai is ‘ i Ry hy 4 nn 


IN e 





Tue Very Rev. R. G. MACINTYRE, O.B.E., M.A., D.D. 


THE VERY REV. RONALD G, 
MACINIY RE,” 0.8.4, (MA Pw. 


Dr. MAcINTYRE has been Hunter-Baillie Professor 
and Professor of Systematic Theology, St. Andrew’s 
College, Sydney University, since 1910. He is 
the son of Angus Macintyre, Victoria, Australia, 
and was educated at Fort William, and University 
and New College, Edinburgh. He received a 
preliminary training in law, was Minister of 
St. Andrew’s Church, Birkenhead, from 1890-95 ; 
U.F. Church, Maxwelltown, Dumfries, from 1895- 
1903; and of Woollahra Church, N.S.W., 1903-10. 
He became Moderator-General of the Presbyterian 
Church of Australia, 1916-18; Director of 
Recruiting for New South Wales, 1916-18. Among 
his publications are “Elijah and Elisha,” 1901, 
“‘The Other Side of Death,’ 1920. 


IN THE BEGINNING, GOD 
Tue Very Rev. Ronatp G. Macintyre, O.B.E., D.D. 


“In the beginning God created the heaven and 
the earth.’’ Genesis 1, I. 


OnE thing which differentiates the Bible from all 
other literature is its way of looking at the history 
of men and of nations. Other ways are of course 
justifiable, but their justification does not invalidate 
the way of the Bible. The ordinary historian reports 
events, and possibly seeks to trace the human 
emotions and motives which gave rise to these 
events. The Bible regards the moving picture of 
human history sub specie etermitatis. It passes at 
once from man to God. The loose threads of human 
action and human policy are gathered up in the 
hand of the all-powerful, the all-wise, and the all- 
loving God. Under that view history becomes 
not so much the story of the nations as the story 
of divine purpose and divine grace. The purpose 
is revelation, revelation of God, but revelation 
embedded in history. The Editors of the “ Cam- 
bridge Modern History”’ assert that “ We search 
the records of the past of mankind in order that 
we may learn wisdom for the present, and hope 
for the future,’ but wisdom is heightened and 
hope made more hopeful when the unity of the whole 


Q 231 


IN THE BEGINNING, GOD 


process is realised in one divine purpose, the unity 
of “one divine event to which the whole creation 
moves,” Then, events are no longer detached 
incidents; they are landmarks in a country flooded 
in ever-growing light with the sunshine of God's 
presence. 

Now the unique characteristic of the Bible is 
just the firmness of voice with which it says God, 
a clear ringing note so different from our modern 
‘lisping, stammering tongue’? when we pass 
beyond the bare facts. These men of old said 
God because they saw God. One does not waste 
time arguing as to the sun in the heavens. It is 
there. We feel the glow of its warmth, we walk 
in the light of it. So the Israelite never argued 
as to the existence of God, nor for that matter did 
Jesus or His Apostles. They saw God in every- 
thing, in the glory of the star-lit heaven, in the 
thunder of the clouds, in the desert bush, and on 
the rock-strewn hillside, in the beauty of the lilies — 
and the providence of the sparrows, in the happen- 
ings of family life and in the rise and fall of nations. 
Secondary causes were not denied, they were 
simply passed by for the one great ultimate cause 
of all. 

We have wisely ceased to go to the Bible for our 
geology or other physical science. For these things 
we go to God’s other book, the book of nature whose 
pages we are learning to read with ever keener 
insight and more appreciation. With that side of 
things the Bible concerns itself little. Its one word 


232 


VERY REV. RONALD G. MACINTYRE 


is God, its one point of view is religious. It starts 
with divine power and activity. It never loses 
sight of it for a moment. A landscape offers to 
our view varied pictures as seen, now under the 
leaden hue of a wintry sky, again in the fresh 
green of spring, or the golden glory of a summer's 
day, or the wild whirl of the tempest. But through 
all it is the same trees, the same hills, the same river. 
So, amid the changing skies of history, the triumph 
or defeat, the rise or fall of nations, the good and 
the evil of men, God abides, ‘“ with whom is no 
variableness, neither shadow by turning,” the 
unchangeable but not unheeding or impassive God. 
This sense of the abiding presence of God, in whom 
and by whom and through whom are all things, 
seems to me the missing note in modern religious 
life: and where not missing it is but a minor cord 
barely heard amid the clash of human argument, 
and the cackling superciliousness of human conceit. 


‘The One remains, the many change and pass, 
Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadows flee.”’ 


We have become so conscious of a multiplicity of 
forces at work in the world that we have all but 
lost sight of the fact that the only force that really 
works is mind, thought, personality, which, in its 
highest measure, is God. To recover this solemn 
sense of God as the ever-present, ever-active, this 
is the first condition of a revival of religion. 

Can I present that thought to you to-day as seen 
in the three great epochs of the world’s history, 


233 


IN THE BEGINNING, GOD 


its creation, its preservation, and its redemption ; 
its beginning, its continuance, and its consum- 
mation ? 


I 


God is at the beginning of creation. That is the 
primary truth in our text, and one cannot but 
admire the simple grandeur of the utterance, 
without preface, without apology, without explana- 
tion. Materialism and Agnosticism have in vain 
tried to delete these opening words from the Bible 
and from faith, and to replace them with the poor 
and unintelligible substitute, ‘In the beginning 
was blind chance.” If the only God of this 
universe be the deaf and blind God whose qualities 
are gravitation and expansion, and who can be 
approached not by prayer but by chemical analysis, — 
a world of merely material forces with neither mind 
to conceive nor will to direct, then the best we can 
ask is that we may pass into the everlasting night 
from which the chance play of physical forces has 
brought us. But reason and faith unite in saying: 
“In the beginning, God,’ and a world which has 
God for its beginning must pass up the golden 
stairs of light and have God for its consummation. 
It is indifferent to faith how far back you put that 
beginning. The method and the period of divine 
working is a question for discovery not for revelation, 
and science can be allowed to pursue its own way 
and arrive at its own conclusions within its own 


234 


VERY REV. RONALD G. MACINTYRE 


sphere, while faith takes the wings of the morning 
and passes out to the assured conviction, “In the 
beginning, God,” only to find that reason justifies the 
bold adventure of faith. 


If 


God cares for that which He has made. He is at 
the beginning of that providence which is the 
preservation and guidance of the world. This 
gold watch of mine was made by a watchmaker in 
Paris, but he has had nothing to do with it for 
thirty years. Is it true that God, having given the 
world a start and endowed it with certain forces, has 
withdrawn Himself from all further direct relation 
to the world? 

We watch a piece of driftwood tossed about 
on the rippling waters, caught in the swirl of the 
stream, hurled over the cataract, and finally flung 
up on the beach. Is that a picture of human life? 
Is your life and mine, with its intimations of immor- 
tality, its vision of higher things, its call of duty, 
its appeal of love, to be the plaything of blind 
uncontrolled forces, tossed, hither and thither as 
chance may hap? Is there no meaning in life? 
Are prosperity and loss, joy and sorrow equally 
meaningless? Are we but driftwood on the vast 
sea of human life? Away with such thoughts. 
We fling them back into the darkness whence they 


235 


IN THE BEGINNING, GOD 


came. I see not only the current bearing me along, 
but I see whence it issues, and whither it carries me. 


‘Not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter 
nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come, 
From God who is our Home.”’ 


Aye, and to God we return laden with the gain of 
life’s experience, and disciplined by its buffets. 
How unbearable would it be if we knew not whether 
God or Devil, reason or chance, sat on the throne 
of the universe. Providence is not a mere synonym 
for accident. Providence is God, our Father in 
heaven. It was a great word of John Calvin’s, 
expressing a great faith, a word I repeated often 
to myself and others in the dark days of war, and 
which we need to say over again in these so troublous 
days of what we call peace, “ God’s hand is on the 
helm of the universe.’”’ We journey through sun- 
shine and gloom, through calm and storm, but ever 
the Captain of our salvation steers the ship of the 
world. And not only does He guide the whole 
but He cares for every life as He cares for the lilies 
of the field and the birds of the air. 


“Nobody here may love thee. 
Or care if thou stand or fall, 
But the great good God above thee 
He loves and cares for all.” 


236 


VERY REV. RONALD G. MACINTYRE 


It is a great faith, too great to be lightly or easily 
held, for nothing great is easy. It is a faith tried 
in the fire of affliction, its vision dimmed by tears, 
its grasp weakened by doubt, but in the end trium- 
phant, for God always justifies Himself if we 
patiently wait for Him. It is no light and super- 
ficial optimism resting on the comfortable cushion 
of a good bank account, and with a blind eye to the 
tragic realities of life. It isa faith in divine provi- 
dence which yet knows sorrow and suffering, but 
knows too that even sorrow and suffering are God’s 
angels though we see not the angel faces in the 
night season of such experiences. We may cry 
with Job, “The hand of God hath touched me,’ 
but we say it now in light of Him whose hand was 
nailed to the Cross for love of us. Therefore sorrow 
and trial when they come may banish the smile 
from our face, but they do not banish from our 
heart the faith which rests in the Eternal Father. 
“My times are in Thy hand.” Ah, but it is the 
nail-pierced hand, and therefore we add: “My 
God, I wish them there.” 


‘God moves in a mysterious way, 
His wonders to perform ; 
He plants His footsteps in the sea, 
And rides upon the storm.” 


Aye, but He moves! We are not dealing with 
an unheeding and uncaring God. 


237 


IN THE BEGINNING, GOD 


iil 


God is at the beginning of redemption. Here is 
what I have called the third great chapter of the 
world’s history, and it too finds its genesis in God. 
The deadly fact of sin must be faced, and sin has 
that terrible consequence that it cannot undo itself. 
It is an utterly supercilious view of the reality of 
human experience to deny the need of salvation. 
In every age and in every race the heart of man, 
knowing its own bitterness, has sought a way of 
escape from itself, from the consequences of its own 
wrongdoing. But the problem of salvation is 
utterly inexplicable if the only or the chief power 
at work is human. That is the pathetically tragic 
experience of all who have tried this way. But 
put God at the beginning of your scheme and the 
whole aspect is changed. Without God is to be 
without hope, but “ we have hope in God.” “It is 
not that we first loved God but that He first loved 
us’; ‘‘God so loved the world that He gave His 
only begotten Son.” The first step in our redemption 
came and comes from God. 

Too many men, including not a few preachers, 
are grown hopeless in these troublous times when 
instability seems the mark on all things, just because 
they leave God out of the reckoning, not perhaps 
deliberately but none the less effectively. I see 
nothing but inefficiency before the Church until it 
rid itself of the dull hopelessness and enervating fear 
which has chilled its blood; and a brave, buoyant 
238 


VERY REV. RONALD G. MACINTYRE 


hopefulness will only come when we put God at the 
beginning as the moving and effective agent who 
when He has begun a good work will bring it to an 
issue. ‘‘I have seen the affliction of my people 
and I am come down to deliver them.” It is mere 
mockery to call to a drowning man to swim ashore. 
What is needed is a strong hand reaching out to 
save him, Salvation is of God. 1 am not likely to 
forget that it is a man God is saving, and not a stone, 


and that He saves along human lines. “It is God 
that worketh in you both to will and to do of his 
good pleasure.” The drift of sin was over- 


whelming the world when God in Christ met it and 
stayed it in the Cross of Calvary. It is not we who 
have gone out to search for God. It is God who 
has come down to deliver, joining Himself to 
humanity that He might lift humanity to God. 
That is the testimony of Paul and Augustine, of 
Luther and Calvin, of Bunyan and Wesley. When 
we see God thus going forth, conquering and to 
conquer, we take heart of courage for the work of 
the Church, and the future of humanity. 

I can feel still the uplift and soul-thrill as I sat 
one summer day, many years ago, surrounded by 
the purple hills and the moorland silence of my 
native Highlands, and communed with a Highland 
shepherd of the things of God. As | talked with 
this man, who was, as we say, “ far ben,’ he turned 
to me and said: ‘‘I canna’ doubt the end, for 
God was at the beginning.” That conviction, my 
brother, will carry you far. 


239 


IN THE BEGINNING, GOD 


The lesson of it all is simple and sublime. God 
is behind all, in all, and through all. 


‘‘ This is the glory, that in all conceived, 
Or felt or known, I recognised a mind, 
Not mine, but like mine, for the double joy, 
Making all things for me, and me for Him.” 


How great the gain, the strength, the peace, if 
you can say this day with assured conviction, say 
it in the face of every experience, through light and 
darkness, in life and death, ‘‘I believe in God.” 
True, not only in the individual life but in the larger 
life of the nations, ‘‘ God is, and God reigns.”’ It 
is the central truth of the Christian faith. ‘‘ God’s 
hand is on the helm of the universe,” and with my 
friend of the hills I add: ‘‘I canna’ doubt the end, 
for God was at the beginning.’’ 


Rev. ANDREW K. WALTON, M.A. 


THE REV. ANDREW KERR WALTON, 
M.A. 


Son of the late Rev. W. Ainslie Walton, B.D. 
Graduated in Arts at Glasgow University. 
Licensed in 1910 on completing his course in the 
United Free Church College, Glasgow. Ordained 
at Ballater in 1912. Inducted at Portland Road 
Church, Kilmarnock, in1rg18. Called to Claremont 
Church, Glasgow, in 1922, to a succession including 
the late Prof. A. R. MacEwen, D.D., New College, 
Edinburgh, and Prof. Adam C. Welch, D.D., New 
College, Edinburgh. 


THE BLESSEDNESS OF MOURNING 
Rev. Anprew K. Watton, M.A. 


“ Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall 
be comforted.” St. Matthew v, 4. 


At first sight this beatitude does not affect us with 
the same sense of being challenged as most of the 
others do. It is impossible to pay heed to such 
a word as “ blessed are the poor in spirit ’’ without 
feeling a direct challenge to our pride, or to receive 
such a word as “ blessed are the meek ’’ without 
feeling the thrust of Christ’s mind directed at our 
impatience. But this word seems to us less a 
challenge than a singularly gracious message of con- 
solation and hope. It is only on reflection that it 
may seem to us to be both. 

Perhaps the reason why it has been received 
by us less as a high and difficult calling than as a 
gentle consolation is that we have limited its 
reference almost wholly to that one great experience 
which has made the heart of man heavy and sad. 
Blessed are they—we have read it—who have 
entered that valley where shadows are, for they shall 
discover the consolations of God. And in that 
great meaning of it it has helped us all. wit ‘has 
helped those even who have not yet passed that 
way, because they have the earnest of the experience 


243 


THE BLESSEDNESS OF MOURNING 


already in their hearts, and it is good to know that 
the mourner is not left uncomforted. And it has 
been found true indeed by a great company of 
those who have been sorely hurt and have discovered 
with a grateful wonder that somehow God has dried 
their tears and has taken the sting of bitterness and 
despair from their hearts. Such are not unwilling 
to use even so radiant a word as “ blessed,” since 
there are some things they know now of God, 
things concerned with His tenderness and strength, 
which they might never have known in any other 
way. ‘Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall 
be comforted.”’ It is a word to rest on, a word to 
save up for a dark day, or, it may be, a word that 
has already proved to be most wonderfully true. 
And if we ask why the one should follow the 
other, why mourning should lead to comfort, a 
part of the reason is to be found just in this, that 
mourning is in itself a protest of the heart against 
that which would filch away its rightful treasure ; 
it is a deep-going denial of death’s power to have the 
last word; and it springs from a secret and 
invincible knowledge that love and life are the only 
abiding realities. Or again, in mourning we are 
sending forth a most passionate question to God, 
and to ask a question of Him is already to be well 
on the way to an answer, for it is man’s bitter 
necessity that makes all the surest discoveries of 
His character and purpose. And so comfort can 
never be far away when we lift up our faces to 
Him in our need. Above all, Jesus has given us a 


244 


REV. ANDREW KERR WALTON 


new reason—a reason as wonderful as Jesus—tor 
confidence in the God Who is specially concerned 
to bring light to those who sit in darkness. 

This word, then, of Jesus will never cease to 
come to mind with power as we have need of it. 
But there is more in it than that. Jesus here, as 
in all His words, is making a high demand on His 
people, a demand which is not limited to special 
hours of life. He who would be in the Kingdom, 
he who would be ‘“‘ happy with the happiness on 
which God congratulates a man,” must always have 
this willingness to face life’s darker powers which 
Jesus calls mourning. 

In one chief aspect of it it is just sympathy He 
is demanding of us, the readiness to open our natures 
to the full impact of human misfortune and suffering 
and sin; the readiness to allow these to tell on the 
heart even when they wound and there is that in us 
which is eager to escape. That is a high demand 
indeed. We are familiar with reasons not a few 
for sheltering our hearts from any such invasion, 
the reasons our selfishness can so easily provide. 
The world, we are willing to say, is so full of darkness 
and pain; and we must, if we are to live at all, 
shut out a great deal of it. Even close at hand, 
all round our doors as it were, there is far more 
than we can wisely find room for. It is to do us 
no good to be saddened by what we can plainly 
not put right. We have a duty to present a bright 
and happy face, and that face would be grievously 
dimmed if we did not take care to turn it often 


245 


THE BLESSEDNESS OF MOURNING 


away from the sight of man’s misfortune and tragic 


folly. Granted that to be without sympathy is — 


to be less than human; granted that a measure 


of it is to be cheerfully offered ; and not forgetting © 


that we ourselves do often stand in sore need of 
it, still there must be a limit set and as reasonable 
people we must set it. 

Jesus does not say so here. And there is nothing 
in His life to encourage the thought. On the 
contrary, He is saying that blessedness is to be 


found the other way, and that other way alone. — 


What does He mean ? 


Let us think first of what He means by the promise ~ 


which is the sure outcome of sympathy. The 
mourner is comforted. Comforted; that is a very 


strong word. It means more than we allow to it, 


beautiful as it may seem to us. It is more than a 
certain ease of heart, more than a gleam of light 


ae ae ey 


ie, HS eae 


breaking through the darkness, more than a gentle — 
touch bespeaking a friendly presence. It is a very © 
strong word giving the promise of wonderful confi- 
dence and security, a joyful assurance that all is well. 
The mind is comforted as well as the heart, the © 
mind is made strong and sure through a knowledge ~ 


that ends fear. Now how is that? How comes it 
that the mourner should reach this position of 


having his feet firmly set on a rock amidst all the — 


shifting sands of life? One reason is just here 


that he has dared to open his nature to the whole of — 


life’s experience and not to a carefully selected 
part of it. Sympathy is a certain truthfulness of 
240 


REV. ANDREW KERR WALTON 


the heart, a refusal to pick and choose, a refusal 
to deny what is there because what is there has 
power to cause pain. And the reward of such 
truthfulness is that there is nothing more to fear. 
The selfish man who turns his face from his brother’s 
need, who carefully shuts out as much of the world’s 
sorrow and sin as he decently can, does not in that 
way escape from it, for we get rid of nothing by 
ignoring it. There is a whole modern religion that 
centres in nothing else than the promise of ending 
mourning by denying that there is any reason for it. 
But the world’s pain still goes on and invades the 
innermost sanctuaries of the heart. The selfish 
man is never quite comfortable; he is a haunted 
man, haunted by the dim ghosts he has never 
honestly faced. Yes, and it is not just thoughts 
that disturb him. In the most literal and outward 
way he is in constant danger. Carlyle tells of an 
outcast family in one of our cities who were refused 
the sympathy of which they stood in desperate 
need. They were outside the brotherhood. But, 
we are told grimly enough, they proved their place 
in it by spreading diphtheria and killing several 
people. We get rid of nothing by ignoring it, and 
if some of us have had bad dreams through seeing 
our land penetrated by social and economic theories 
which are charged with the gravest possibility of 
disaster, we would do well to mourn day and night 
until the social conditions which make them well 
nigh inevitable are put right. The mourner, then, 
is comforted because he faces the truth, because he 

R 247 


THE BLESSEDNESS OF MOURNING 


is no longer living in an unreal world, because 
something has not been turned away from the 
front door only to slip in at the back and steal away 
his peace. 

There is that, but there is more. Jesus makes 
this promise of comfort with such joyous certitude 
because He knew so well that the man who opens his 
nature to the world’s need is also opening his nature 
to the presence of the Father, and that presence is 
comfort indeed. Wherever there is pain and 
wherever there is sin God is present, Jesus knew, in 
all the glory of His redeeming purpose. To turn 
away our face is to lose the one sure vision of God. 
Is not that what Jesus means for us? We say 
of Him that He is the revelation of God. Well then, 
where was He to be found? Where in any street 
in Galilee or Jerusalem was He to be found, the 
Man of sorrows, so deeply acquainted with grief? 
And what is the meaning of that teaching of His 
that tells us where He is to be found for evermore— 
inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these ye 
didit unto Me? How truly His servant spoke when 
he discerned that where sin abounds—and it is 
sorrow’s hope also—the gracious presence of the 
Father abounds also. Be persuaded that this 1s 
no mere theory of God. Think! Think of all such 


as have known the comfort of a deep, sure confidence 
in God. Think of Paul or Wesley or Booth or any — 


other for whom God has been as real as his own soul, 


and remember how that glorious certitude was : 
sustained by the vision of God already present in the — 


248 


| 
) 


REV. ANDREW KERR WALTON 


heart of human sorrow and sin. It was not as 
they shrank away in self-guarding or despair from 
the suffering and sin of men, but as they faced it 
and received it right home to their hearts that there 
was born in them ever anew the assurance of God 
present in His redeeming power. 

Now let me add these two words in closing. 
Let no one find in this high demand for sympathy 
a summons especially directed to those who have 
been notably endowed with that capacity. There 
may be something in that phrase, ‘‘ a sympathetic 
temperament,” although, for myself, I suspect it. 
If there is, then it is a privilege for which an account 
shall be rendered. At any rate that is not what 
our Lord is speaking of here. It is not a natural 
endowment, but a moral achievement—this sym- 
pathy that is blessed. It is a victory won over 
selfishness and cowardice, and for most of us a 
victory hard won and desperately maintained, 
There is a tale of Jesus that has an endless warning 
for us, and a phrase in it that illuminates the point 
of danger like a lightning flash. It is the best 
known tale of all. The lad has come home at last 
and the table is spread, the candles are all lit, every 
face reflects the glory of the father’s joy, and the 
air is tremulous with the angels’ song. But outside 
is the elder brother, a man uncomforted, bitter- 
hearted, wretched. ‘“‘He was angry and would 
not go in.” He would not go in. Everything is 
there. Had he gone in, had he seen what was 
beyond that door, the sinful lad and the father who 


249 


THE BLESSEDNESS OF MOURNING 


loved him, then had the bitter fountain of his heart 
been made sweet and the very comfort of God been 
established within him. | 

I have said that it is a moral achievement, this 
blessed mourning, and it does indeed demand our 
all, but it is a moral achievement that can only be 
undertaken in the presence of Him Who demands 
it of us. It is He Who only can make it possible 
for us, He Who can save us from falling away into 
a cynical acquiescence or an embittered despair. 
It is when we see Him mourning and being com- 
forted by the blessed presence of the Father that 
our will to face all is kept firm, and the insight that 
perceives the divine grace at work is given to us. 
So let us hear Him speak again—the Mourner Who 
was comforted—“ blessed are they that mourn, for — 
they shall be comforted.”’ 


250 


Tue Rr. Rev. BISHOP E. $8. TALBOT, D.D. 


THE RT. REV. EDWARD STUART 
TALBOT, D.D.Oxon, LL.D.Cantab, D.D. Edin. 


BisHop successively of Rochester, Southwark, 
and Winchester, now resigned. Second son of 
the Hon. John Chetwynd Talbot, Q.C., and 
Caroline Stuart Wortley, daughter of the first 
Lord Wharncliffe. Educated at Charterhouse 
and later privately (from illness). Won the Slade 
Exhibition at Christ Church, Oxford. First Class 
in Literee Humaniores, December, 1865, and in 
Law and Modern History, December, 1866. 
Elected Senior Student of Christ Church, 1866. 
Was tutor, 1867-1870. First Warden of Keble 
College, 1870-1888. Examined in the Hon. 
School of Lit. Hum., 1874-76. Select Preacher 
before the University, 1881-1882, 1883-1885, 1906- 
1907. Became Hon. Chaplain and Chaplain to 
the Queen, 1890-1895. Chaplain to Archbishop 
Benson, 1883-1887. Was Rural Dean of Leeds, 
1889-1895. Hon. Canon of Ripon. Became 
Bishop of Rochester, 1895, and, on division of the 
Diocese, Bishop of Southwark, 1905, and Bishop 
of Winchester, 1911. Wrote the Essay in Lux 
Mundi on the ‘Preparation for the Gospel in 
History.” Has published several volumes of 
sermons. 





A SIMPLE DUTY ANDITS REWARD: 
MISSIONS PAST AND PRESENT 
Tus Ricur Rev. Bisoop Tarsot, D.D. 


« And every one that hath forsaken houses, or 
brethyen, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wefe, 
or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall 
yecetve an hundredfold.”” Matthew xix, 29. 


WE learn some of our best lessons from experience, 
not only in things human but in the ways of God. 
Beginning with ourselves, we gain faith in the divine 
authority of conscience, by experience, alike on the 
large scale and the small, of the result of obeying 
or of flouting it. So, too, God shows Himself in 
history. If we were not so accustomed to it we 
should be more struck with the fact that our sacred 
book the Bible is so largely taken up by history, and 
that God’s people were slowly led on to purer 
religion and higher faith by the working of history 
as discerned by spirit-taught or inspired men such 
as the greater prophets. And at the very centre 
of our faith, it was through a supreme experience 
that God taught His people, and has taught us 
the experience of a life, of a personality, of a 
character, of a conflict between One holy and just 
and His enemies lending themselves to their evil 
passions and to dark influences, finally of a Death 


253 


A SIMPLE DUTY AND ITS REW ARD 


which becomes a Victory. Itis by this experience of 
Jesus Christ more even than by His own teachings that 
the truth of God has penetrated the heart of man. 

I dwell on this, because I have been lately impressed 
by a lesson of experience which I wish to share with 
you, believing, as I do, it teaches us what it greatly 
concerns us to learn, and opens to us some responsi- 
bilities which it greatly concerns us to face. 

I am thinking of the discharge within our Church 
of the duty of Evangelization to the nations. 
The older among us like myself can remember 
how the cause was formerly regarded. Tolerantly 
sometimes, with the respect due to any forlorn 
hope and with admiration for gallant individual 
work ; contemptously often, and perhaps intolerantly, 
as something cranky and fanatical, and at best 
a diversion of energies which were all wanted 
for home work. The word missionary was in 
common estimation the last word for dulness. 
Such views of Missions are, of course, still current 
among many, but mot among those who know. 
For now it appears that Christian Missions have 
had results which our great administrators have 
been forward to recognise. They have been at 
the very heart of educational effort alike in civilised 
India, and among backward or child races. They 
have contributed a special knowledge of the races 
among which they go; and their disinterested 
work has conciliated respect for European purposes 
of service to other races. 

Some of you will have seen this lately set out 


254 


RT. REV. EDWARD STUART TALBOT 


in the newspapers. I give two examples from Zhe 
Times of last week. One article under the heading 
of the ‘“‘ New Missionary,’ draws out the extra- 
ordinary development of literature about races and 
religions which has been a secondary effect of 
Missions, and it ends with the words “ Christian 
Missions have made a notable contribution to the 
idealistic movements of the world, and have shown 
the nobler side of Europe to many millions of 
Asiatics and Africans who would otherwise have 
judged (our) civilisation by the European responsi- 
bility for the World-war.”’ 

A second extract is from the review of a remark- 
able book, which should be widely read, on 
“ Christianity and the Race Problem.’”’ The writer, 
Mr. Oldham, is one of those who deserve the double 
title of a fervent missionary and of a missionary- 
statesman. The reviewer says: “It is a welcome 
fact that during the last period the status of the 
missionary has steadily risen. The idea that he is 
likely to be a narrow and somewhat foolish fanatic 
has vanished. The great missionary organisations 
are of international importance. Their leaders are 
consulted by statesmen, and their advice is not 
without influence on public policy. The sympathy 
of missionaries for native races and their knowledge 
of where the shoe pinches are of obvious value to 
officials. Their criticisms are sometimes resented, 
but they can seldom be ignored.” Permit me to 
repeat that this is not my language but the language 
of our leading newspaper. 


255 


A SIMPLE DUTY AND ITS REWARD 


Here then is a piece of experience on a vast scale 
gained within a century. What does it teach us? 
What is it God’s will that we should learn from it? 

First, I think a very simple lesson of practical 
duty, moral and religious. These great changes— 
and with more time and skill they could be displayed 
far more impressively—have come about, have 
been results; but they were not consciously aimed 
at, they were not motives of the efforts from which 
they have sprung. Those efforts were prompted 
by simple duty or something deeper than duty. 
They were made in response to the two great 
commandments of love—in loving duty to God, 
who through Jesus Christ had given the bidding to 
go everywhere, carrying the good news, and there- 
with they were prompted by a burning desire to 
share what they had received from Him with those 
others who did indeed ‘sit in darkness and the 
shadow of death,” in all the terrors and in all the 
corruption of the heathen state. 

That was the motive. That was why they went. 
The rest has come about. They put themselves 
into God’s hands, and He has moulded and used ~ 
their devotion to produce these large unforeseen 
results. They ‘“‘ sought the Kingdom of God, and 
all these things have been added to them.” 

What does this experience suggest to us? First, 
it teaches a simple lesson of thousandfold applica- 
tion. Life is a mysterious and often incalculable 
thing. We cannot see far in front. But it is of 
the very pith and marrow of our faith to believe 
250 


RI. REV. EDWARD STUART TALBOT 


that he who does right, in duty to God and man, 
wins blessing for himself and for others more than 
he could ever tell—more than he foresees or knows. 
It was said to me once by that wise man, Dean 
Church of St. Paul’s, that looking back upon life 
with recollection of many enterprises for good, he 
had seen them fail sometimes of the good which 
they sought, but never fail of some good result. 

There is none of us to whom this lesson may not 
at some time be needed, and be of service. But 
there is a more special lesson which I would desire 
to impress. The cause which they loyally served, 
and which God has so plainly acknowledged and 
rewarded is now in our hands, and upon our responsi- 
bility. It is time for all members of the Church of 
Christ to brush away the silly, faithless, or ignorant 
objections to the work of the Gospel, which work 
like everything else has its blunders, its foolish 
representatives and the like—and to recognise that 
it is an integral part of the Christian life to support 
that cause by prayer, saying with large meaning 
“Thy Kingdom come,” by money, by service, and 
by sympathy. 

We have always known, or ought to have known, 
that it was, in a famous soldier’s phrase, “ part 
of our marching orders.” We know now by the 
evidence of these results, what comes beyond all 
expectations from obeying the command. 

Let us in simple obedience do this our duty, and 
we shall find in results how it acts back on ourselves, 
strengthening our faith, enlarging our hearts, giving 


257 


A SIMPLE DUTY AND ITS REWARD 


reality to our membership in the Kingdom. There 
is nothing more inspiriting than the sense of 
belonging to a great cause ; it is what a good deal 
of English Churchmanship has been apt to lack. 
Nothing gives it more wholesome stimulus than 
united action on behalf of the Gospel. 

But there is, I think, one other impression which 
ought to be made upon us by the contrast and change 
in this matter as compared with Victorian days. We 
must surely believe that God is leading the nations, 
and the Church in its work among them, some 
whither. Can we fail to see what the general trend 
of the world’s movement has been? Obviously, and 
as all know, it is in the direction of bringing the 
peoples into nearer contact, and of doing this at a 
time when the effect of all the appliances of civilis- 
ation is to stimulate their life, and the life of the 
classes and races which make them up. Can we 
doubt that all this means the opening up of questions 
colossal in scale, intricate in character, urgent in 
their stress. The relations of peoples black, dark, 
yellow and white ; in a word the colour problem or 
problems: the rights and responsibilities of advanced 
races in control of those that are backward: the 
recognition of the large possibilities of development 
and uplift of these latter under education: and the 
certainty that with such development claims to a 
more equal or independent position will be made. 

Is it not clear that these things must be faced, 
and faced as parts of what is plainly a providential 
movement? And is it not equally clear that 
258 


RT. REV. EDWARD STUART TALBOT 


Christians cannot be insensible of these issues, or 
without words of counsel as to the principles with 
which they should be faced and handled ? 

On these matters there is need of all the guidance 
that statesmen experts and thinkers can give. 

But you and I, of the rank and file, cannot evade 
the responsibilities of thinking out the principles 
which are to govern the order of the vast inter- 
national world, or of asking ourselves, with regard 
to this or that matter, how do the principles which 
Christ has taught us bear upon it? Where are the 
forces of His Kingdom opposed now, as in the age- 
long fight against those of the world in their various 
shapes, of greedy money seeking, of imperious and 
overbearing force, of contempt for individual human 
value. 

Ultimately it is the public opinion of the nations 
which is judge, and it is our part to see that that 
opinion is true to the principle of Christianity, and, 
so far as we can discern it, the will and purpose of 
God. | 














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Rey. DINSDALE T. YOUNG, D.D. 


REV. DINSDALE T. YOUNG, D.D. 


MINISTER of Westminster Central Hall since 1914. 
He was educated at private schools, then at 
Headingley Theological College, Leeds. He 
entered the Wesleyan ministry in 1879, and was 
the youngest candidate accepted by the Wesleyan 
Conference up to that time. He was called to 
churches at Highgate (London), Islington (Birm- 
ingham), “Centenary (York), Gravel Lane 
(Manchester), Bayswater (London), Nicolson 
Square (Edinburgh), Great Queen Street (London) ; 
and from 1906-1914 was Minister of Wesley’s 
Chapel, City Road, London. In addition to his 
regular pastorate, he conducts services and delivers 
lectures every week in all parts of the kingdom, 
travelling on an average 10,000 miles a year, 
and doing considerable literary work; also taking 
an active part in undenominational work of various 
kinds. In 1914 he became President of the 
Wesleyan Conference. His publications include: 
‘“‘Girding on the Armour: Letters to a Young 
Preacher,” ‘‘ Neglected People of the Bible,” 
‘The Enthusiasm of God,’’ “‘ Robert Newton: 
The Eloquent Divine,” ‘‘The Travels of the 
Heart,” ‘Messages for Home and Life,” ‘‘ The 
Unveiled Evangel,” ‘‘Heroic Leaders,’ and 
‘“‘ Stars of Retrospect (an autobiography).” 


ee Oe a eee 


A CASUAL QUESTION AND ITS 
MODERN IMPLICATIONS 
Rev. Dinspate T. Younc, D.D. 


“ And he said, Dost thou know Greek ?”’ (R.V.). 
Acts XxXi, 37. 


WHAT concern have we in this episodical question 
of long ago? Surely some, perhaps much, or it 
would not have place in the Book of God. 

There was an unprecedented uproar in Jerusalem. 
The metropolis was in a ferment: it seethed with 
excitement. The innocent cause of the perturbation 
was that big little man St. Paul. Was he not the 
most commanding figure of history except the 
Incarnate God ? 

‘The violence of the crowd ”’ bore him to the foot 
of the steps leading up to the Tower of Antonio, 
here called “‘ The Castle.’’ As he stands upon the 
steps “the Chief Captain,” Claudius Lysias, the 
‘“‘Chiliarch ’—head of a thousand soldiers—ap- 
proaches him. ‘“‘ May I say something unto thee ? ”’ 
inquires the much-assaulted Paul, speaking in the 
expressive Greek, when the Chief Captain, startled, 
exclaims “‘Dost thou know Greek?” The A.V. 
reads it, “‘ Canst thou speak Greek,’ but the word 
‘speak ”’ is not in the original language of the query. 

Long ago the Chief Captain has vanished into 

S 263 


A CASUAL QUESTION 


eternity. The steps of ‘‘ The Castle ’’ have crumbled 
into dust. The fiery mob have gasped their last 
gasp. But the casual question, “ Dost thou know 
Greek ?”’ still points morals for us all. 


(1) WE ARE OFTEN NEEDLESSLY SURPRISED AT 
PEOPLE. 


The Chief Captain’s question bristles with surprise. 
He expected that if Paul spoke it would be but in 
the vulgar Aramaic, and lo, he speaks the language 
of culture. He had no idea that Paul was so 
educated. ‘“Canst thou speak Greek?” He was 
simply astonished. 

This is very true to life as we all know it. The 
Chief Captain still lives, and we often hear his 
surprised exclamation. And was it not a needless 
surprise? Paul was a University man. He was 
cultured to his finger tips. He had one of the 
greatest brains of history. He was of learning all 
compacted. | 

Yet the Chief Captain was immeasurably surprised 
that he knew Greek! Presently his surprise will be 
augmented. Yes. This mirrors modern life. We all 
often reproduce the réle of the Chief Captain. 

We are frequently needlessly surprised at people’s 
temporal estate. We had no idea that plain man 
was so well off! Yet why should we have been so 
surprised ? He was ceaselessly industrious and 
constantly frugal. We were amazed how well read 
204 


REV. DINSDALE T. YOUNG 


and intelligent was that unassuming man! But 
our surprise was needless. Assumption is not 
culture. The spiritual quality of men and women 
often needlessly surprises us. We say, “1 never 
thought that man was such a Christian.” “,I-never 
dreamed that woman could have been such a heroine 
amid sorrow.” But we did not know them, any 
more than Lysias knew Paul. And we did not 
know their inner life of devotion to the Saviour of 
the world. We knew not their prayers, their 
unseen sessions with their Bible, their gracious 
investiture with the Spirit of Christ. Yes. We 
often plaintively echo the old-time question of the 
needlessly astonished Chiliarch, ‘ Dost thou know 
Creek fi 

Incredible as it seems, we even express needless 
surprise of God. Why should God permit such 
providential happenings? Can God have revealed 
Himself in a book? Can the Son of His love have 
become man? Has He redeemed the world by a 
Cross? Does He justify the ungodly when they 
penitently commit themselves to the Saviour-Son ° 
Is it not really a needless surprise? Study God. 
Acquaint yourselves with Divine Revelation. Know 
the truth. And then our only surprise will be that 
we ever were surprised. So we see that the casual 
question uttered on the stairs of the Castle at 
Jerusalem is to all intents and purposes up to date. 


265 


A CASUAL QUESTION 


(2) WE OFTEN UNDERESTIMATE PEOPLE. 


The Chief Captain’s interrogation sprang from 
sheer underestimation of Paul. He had left several 
equations out of count. He mistook a mighty 
volume for a petty pamphlet. 

“ Canst thou speak Greek?” ‘‘ No man better,” 
is quaint old John Trapp’s comment. And the 
learned Puritan is right. Anon, Lysias hears Paul 
ring out a mighty speech in Hebrew, and ” when 
they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to 
them, they kept the more silence.” In that amazed 
silence Lysias shared, ‘‘ And so should we,” pithily 
adds Dr. Parker. , 

The Chief Captain made a discovery we too often 
make—that he had underestimated the man he 
confronted. The fact is, Lysias had entertained 
preconceptions of Paul. He deemed him an 
“Egyptian.” He thought him a mobocrat. He 
imagined him a leader of ‘‘ murderers.” He had 
wrongly interpreted the personality. 

And Lysias had a rude awakening. Lo, this man 
knows Greek! He is an orator in “ Hebrew.” It 
transpires, too, that he is a ‘‘ Roman” and “ free- 
born.” The Chief Captain discovers that this 
despised man is altogether his superior. Ah! We 
have not travelled far from the stairs of the Castle 
in Jerusalem. We are constantly underestimating 
men and things. What mistaken preconceptions 
we often have! We thought that man was an 
ignoramus. We thought that man was a charlatan. 
266 


REV. DINSDALE T. YOUNG 


We thought that man to be a zealot. And we 
found knowledge, sincerity, balanced judgment, 
where we had never dreamed to find them. 

Some of us have such inordinate self-appreciation 
that it deceives us into underestimating others. 
We are the victims of our mistaken preconceptions. 
We apply the magnifying glass to self and the 
microscope to those around us. We have caught 
the trick of the Chief Captain in ancient Jerusalem. 

Too frequently we underestimate even our friends. 
‘There standeth one among you whom ye know 
not,” is a principle all too commonly illustrated 
even in our homes. How little we know one 
another! Is it any marvel that we know not 
God? 

Alas! We underestimate none as we do the 
Christ of God. Are we not often ashamed that we 
have so inadequately understood Him? “ When 
we see Him there is no beauty that we should desire 
Him.” Is it not high time some of us searched 
ourselves as to our underestimation of Christ ? 
“What think ye of Christ?’ Is He God the Son 
to us? Is He the Divine Saviour to us? Or are 
we standing on the stairs of the Castle echoing the 
depreciatory question of Lysias, and a greater than 
Paul is here ? 

What a comfort it is that the Saviour never under- 
estimates us/ He knows what is in us. He gives 
us credit for every evangelical aspiration. He 
marks not only what we are, but what we desire to 
be. He judges us by our best, not by our basest. 

267 


A CASUAL QUESTION 


He discovers the “‘ son of Abraham ”’ shining through 
the sordid Zacchzus. 

He swiftly discerns what the Puritans called 
“actings of faith’ towards Himself. Courage, 
Brother! Your character and your reputation are 
safe in His mighty but gentle hands! It may be 
our lot to be unrequited amid human society, but 
“the Lord knoweth them that are His,’ and His 
“ Well done! ’* shall not be lacking at last. 


(3) WE OFTEN ESTIMATE PEOPLE BY THEIR 
CIRCUMSTANCES. 


This is exactly what the Chief Captain did with 
Paul, Paul was a refugee from the infuriated mob. 
Paul was a prisoner. Paul was poor and despised. 
Lysias judged him by his untoward circumstances. 

“Dost thou know Greek?” The Chiliarch found 
he had misread the riddle of Paul’s personality. 
Really Paul was “‘ the Chief Captain,” always and 
everywhere. He had acquisitions that Lysias was 
amazed tonote. Lysias had assumed an unjustifiable 
superiority and credited Paul with an undeserved 
inferiority. In a word, he had estimated the great 
apostle by his circumstances. 

We are all so apt to do this. Personality is 
elusive, circumstances are obvious, or easily ascer- 
tained. Circumstances are etymologically the things 
which stand around us; but how different the man 
268 


REV. DINSDALE IT. YOUNG 


and the things which environ him! Yet we con- 
stantly confuse them, as the Chief Captain did. 

It is dangerous indeed to follow this illusory 
method. A shabby coat may conceal a duke. 
Genius may be housed in a cottage. A wayfaring 
man may be a saint of God. A dying man upon 
a cross may be the Divine Saviour of the world. 

You may live in a grand house, but your soul 
may live ina hovel. You may have a packed purse, 
but an empty heart. There is often a glaring and 
dramatic contrast between the circumstances of 
people and the people themselves. 

O, the mercy that Christ, the Righteous Judge, 
does not estimate us by our circumstances ! And 
yet, O, the terror of it for such as are not ever crying, 


“ Rock of ages, Cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in Thee!” 


“Ts thine heart right?” That is the everlasting 
touchstone. I pray you emulate not the errant 
Chief Captain as he superficially queries on the 
Castle steps. 


(4) WE OFTEN FIND THAT PEOPLE ARE REVEALED 
BY EXIGENCIES. 


It was the tumult in decorous Jerusalem that 
disclosed the real calibre of Paul to the Chief Captain. 
He discovered that he knew Greek and Hebrew, 
that he was a University man, no “Egyptian,” but 


269 


A CASUAL QUESTION 


a freeborn Roman. And he discovered much more 
than this in Paul—if indeed he had eyes to see it all. 

Always life’s tumults reveal us. It is on the stairs 
of the Castle facing the “fool fury ’”’ that we see 
you as you are. 

Trouble has been a great revealer. You never 
knew what a believer your father was till that 
destructive loss befell him. You saw what a saint 
your mother was “in the cloudy and dark day.”’ 
Exigencies reveal us: be they sad or glad. Sudden 
prosperity brings out the hidden fineness of some 
natures, and sudden adversity shows how golden are 
some souls, 


Our Incarnate Lord was never revealed so 


gloriously as when He faced exigencies. How “ the 
death of the Cross” discovered Him to be “ the 
Lord of Glory.” 

And it is the exigencies of life which will reveal 
you. When your city is reeking with tumult we 
shall see what manner of man you are. 

And your dying hour will reveal you. “Our 
people die well,’ said John Wesley. C. H. Spurgeon 
said the same of his people. Simple clinging to the 
Saviour amid life’s changing scenes will eventuate 


in quiet resting upon Hi inm the final hour. ‘‘ How 


wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan? ” 

All this emerges from our overhearing the Chief 
Captain, Lysias, utter his trivial question on the 
stairs of the Castle in days long gone. 


270 


b Maid 
((e 


Rev. J. SCOTT LIDGETT, M.A., D.D. 


REV. JOHN SCOTT LIDGETT, M.A., D.D. 


WARDEN of the Bermondsey Settlement since 
1891. Dr. Scott Lidgett was educated at Black- 
heath Proprietary School, afterwards at University 
College, London. He entered the Wesleyan 
ministry in 1876, and was stationed successively 
at Tunstall, Southport, Cardiff, Wolverhampton 
and Cambridge. He founded, in connection with 
the late Dr. Moulton, the Bermondsey Settlement in 
1891. He became President of the National Council 
of the Evangelical Free Churches of England and 
Wales in 1906; and Hon. Joint Secretary in 
1914; President of the Wesleyan Methodist 
Conference, 1908; President of the Free Church 
Commission, 1912-1915; Member of the Royal 
Commission on Venereal Diseases, 1913-1915; 
Leader of the Progressive Party on the L.C.C. 
since 1918. Amongst his publications are: ‘‘ The 
Spiritual Principle of the Atonement,” ‘Si ies 
Fatherhood of God in Christian Truth and Life,” 
‘“‘ The Christian Religion : Its Meaning and Proof,” 
“‘ Apostolic Ministry,” ‘God in Christ Jesus: 
A Study of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians,” 
‘‘ Sonship and Salvation,” ‘‘ A Study of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews.” 


THE MASTER KEY 
Rev. J. Scotr Lipncerr ‘D.D.* 


“God is love; and he that abideth in love 
abideth in God, and God abideth in him.” 
1 John iy, 16. 


Tus Epistle is the most artless of the New Testament 
writings. Its very simplicity may make us neglect 
its profundity. The writer does not reason, he 
“beholds. He proceeds, not by way of argument, 
but of repeated declarations of what he perceives by 
intuitive vision. Hence the theological importance 
of what he says may easily be overlooked. Yet 
this is not only the sublimest and most far-reaching 
affirmation about God that has ever been made ; 
it is also the most original and daring. And yet, 
while it is daring, we shall come to see that it is 
the only declaration about God which gives a 
sufficient and satisfying explanation of all things. 
The way in which this statement is reached is 
as remarkable as the statement itself. The writer 
has a twofold foundation upon which his conclusion 
rests. There is, first of all, the supreme historic 
Personality of our Lord Jesus Christ. The opening 
words of the Epistle lay stress upon His reality 
and upon the writer’s intimate knowledge of Him, 


* A sermon preached in Liverpool Cathedral on Sunday, 
October 25th, 1925. 


273 


THE MASTER KEY 


“That which was from the beginning, that which 
we have heard, that which we have seen with our 
eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled. 
concerning the Word of life.’”’ This personality is 
at once frankly human and transcendently divine. 
In the next place, there are the spiritual affections 
which were manifested in this personality, and 
which His influence awakened and inspired in His 
followers. The-writer blends these two and makes 
them both the source and the substance of the 
final theology and the perfect religion. ‘‘ God is 
love,’ this is the theology; ‘‘ He that abideth in 
love abideth in God, and God abideth in him,” this 
is the corresponding religion. . 

God is personal, If anyone denies this, whether 
he be philosopher or novelist—and apparently in 
these days the opinions of novelists count with many 
people for more than the judgments of philosophers 
—his teaching may have importance for abstract 
thought, but has little or no bearing upon religion, 
for religious experience rests upon belief in and 
enjoyment of fellowship with a personal God. Yet 
the personality of God must be unspeakably greater 
than the personality of man. Not only is our 
personality finite, but we have to strive manfully 
in order to attain and hold fast such personality 
as we possess. The tragedy of many lives is that 
they either fail to attain true personality or lose 
it under the pressure and the temptations of life. 
The personality of God is eternal and infinitely | 
perfect. 


274 


REV. JOHN SCOTT LIDGETT 


But how is this More of the divine personality to 
be conceived? To this question four answers other 
than that of the text have been given, partly within 
and partly outside the Christian Church. And as 
our idea of God, whatever it may be, tends to 
produce a corresponding attitude towards Him, 
each of these four ideas of God is reflected in a 
distinctive type of religion. 

The first answer conceives of God chiefly as 
Sovereign Will, backed by almighty power. The 
grim paganism by which Israel was surrounded 
represented God as the magnified image of an 
Oriental despot. Even Christian thinkers, especially 
St. Augustine and Calvin, have sought to emphasise 
the personality and supremacy of God by laying the 
main stress upon His will. In their case, however, 
the influence of Christ has raised their doctrine to a 
far higher plane than could be attained by pagan 
religions. Yet so great has been the effect of such 
teaching that if you were to ask the man in the 
street to day what he means by God the probability 
is that he would reply: “The Almighty.” Indeed, 
this may be said to be the theology of the practical 
man, who has little use for God except as a power to 
be counted on or reckoned with. If this doctrine 
be predominant, the corresponding note of religion 
becomes that of submission to the will of God, how- 
ever inscrutable it may be. In this submission faith 
and fear will be blended in varying proportions accord- 
ing to the temper of the age or of the worshipper, fear 
predominating in paganism, faith in Christianity. 


275 


THE MASTER KEY 


The second answer interprets God in terms of 
Wisdom. He is the All-Wise. Men wonder, with 
Kant, at the starry heavens above—the infinite 
system and the majestic march of the heavenly 
bodies. They marvel at the ordered process of the 
seasons and the intimate relations between organic 
life and the inorganic world. They watch the 
evolution of nature and man, and find in all these the 
action of supreme Wisdom, selecting ends and 
adapting means to their accomplishment. Such is 
the theology of reflective minds, and their religious 
attitude towards God and life is mainly intellectual. 
It consists chiefly in the reverent interpretation of 
the plan and purpose of the world in the endeavour — 
to become conformable to it. 

The third answer conceives God as spiritually and 
morally Perfect. He is the All-Holy. In the 
attainment of this vision is to be found the triumph 
of the Old Testament. The Prophets came to 
apprehend the secret of the Godhead in the spiritual 
and ethical glory of Jehovah. He established His 
claim upon them not because He could crush them, 
but because He was worthy of a worship which 
called out and satisfied all that is highest and best 
in human nature. He is the eternal home and 
source of Righteousness and Truth, Purity and 
Grace. St. John pays his tribute to this conception 
when he says in this Epistle “ God is light, and in 
Him is no darkness at all.” Hence the religion of 
Israel emphasised holiness as its distinctive mark. 
“Be ye holy, for I am holy, saith the Lord.” It 
270 


REV. JOHN SCOTT LIDGETT 


was the religion of separation, the separation of a 
peculiar people to God, accompanied on the cere- 
monial level by a special consecration of men and 
places, days and sacrificial gifts, to His service. 
The imperishable service of the Prophets was that 
they raised this conception of holiness to the spiritual 
and moral sphere. Micah speaks for them all when 
he says: ‘ What doth He require of thee, O man, 
but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God.” This is the religion of the moralist. 

There is one more idea, that of God as Pure Spirit. 
The supreme I of God is so sublime as to blot out all 
that can be said of it and to absorb into itself all 
other personalities, as meteors fall into the central 
sun. God is approached by negation, by stripping 
off from the thought of Him all conceptions derived 
either from the consciousness of men or from the 
world that surrounds them, until the pure sublimity 
of ineffable Personality has been reached. This 
is the doctrine of mysticism, whether ancient or 
modern, whether Christian or Indian. Such a God 
can only be worshipped by the intense aspiration of 
ascetic contemplation. Man must be stripped of 
all his thoughts, affections, and desires in order that 
eventually he may be lost in God. 

We come from all these answers to the simple yet 
inexhaustible declaration of the text—God is love. 
This is the evangelic answer. God is the creative 
Self-giver who bestows Himself in creating and 
constituting His world on such wise that He may 
impart Himself ever more fully to it, and may receive 


47 |. 


THE MASTER KEY 


from it the response of an ever-growing and joyful 
self-giving on the part of creatures who are called 
to be His sons. When God is seen to be Love the 
only religion that counts is that of “ abiding in love.” 
Before this great statement about God and religion 
could be made, love had to be re-born from above. 
It means not emotion, whether of passion or fond- 
ness, but the inmost inspiration and energy of self- 
devotion which brings all the parts and powers of 
God’s perfection and of man’s being into full activity 
for the establishment of spiritual fellowship between 
them. 

This great declaration is to be taken seriously. 
God and religion are either this or nothing. It is 
the highest that can be conceived, and in this great 
concern the highest, when revealed, eclipses all the 
rest, as the stars fade before the rising sun. Yet 
there is something more. The highest and best is 
the only explanation of all the rest. Will and Power, 
Wisdom, Holiness and Spirit, whether taken separ- 
ately or together, fail adequately to set forth the 
God Who creates, sustains and redeems His world. 
What can be the motive, the method, and the nature 
of a Creation which culminates in spiritual Person- 
alities in Whom has been implanted both the need 
and the capacity for fellowship through love? In 
a word, love alone supplies the spring and end 
which make Power truly and immanently sovereign, 
Wisdom really wise, by supplying to it a worthy 
purpose, Holiness essentially good and not repellent, 
Spirit not abstract but real. The answer of the 
278 


REV. FOHN SCOTT LIDGETT 


text takes up into itself and perpetuates in a higher 
and larger whole all that is true in the other ideas 
of God, and all that is permanent in the types of 
religion that correspond with those ideas. 

Thus the Incarnation of our Lord reveals and 
explains the relationship of God to the world. The 
artist, when he has completed his masterpiece, sends 
it out into the world and may lose sight of it alto- 
gether. His picture may eventually find its way 
either to the mansion of an American millionaire or 
perchance to a lumber room. God does not thus 
cast forth His world from Himself, but in creating 
it takes it and all that is therein into such living 
relationship to Himself as that all its being and 
possibilities are fed from the infinite source of His 
Divine Perfection. The greatest failure of Christian 
theology has been its inability to interpret the 
transcendent sovereignty of God in the light of His 
immanent self-giving, which became fully manifest 
in the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Hence we are to seek for the revelation of God 
above all in the personality of man. This is the 
explanation of God’s command to Ezekiel, lying 
prostrate before Him—‘“ Son of man, stand upon 
thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.’’ Not in the 
suppression of human powers is God found, but in 
their complete and highest activity. To the same 
effect is the vision of Elijah. Baal might be found 
in the wind, the earthquake and the fire, which 
terrify men into subjection. Jehovah is found in 
the ‘‘ still, small voice,” which awakens reason and 


i, 299 


THE MASTER KEY 


conscience, trust and loyalty, and through them 
brings man into intelligent and active partnership 
with God. Hence, the highest revelation of God 
is found in the Personality of Jesus Christ, and 
Christ reigns because He so dwelt in love, so recreated 
the very conception of love, and so manifested its © 
true self-giving in His Sacrifice as to give the material 
for this great statement of St. John. 

The text is as serious in its teaching and solemn 
in its warning as it is comforting in the gospel that it 
proclaims. If God be really and truly Love, then 
the world can only be made right through the 
universal sovereignty of Love. Mankind is passing 
through an unexampled crisis. International, econo- 
mic and social relations have all been brought into 
disorder by the Great War. In attempting to put 
them right all the leaders who were hailed as super- 
men have in turn become discredited. Every 
possible shift and expedient has been used to set 
things right. Yet, if God be Love the inmost law 
of His world must needs be Love, and every method 
of reconstruction will fail unless it be the expression 
not of the self-seeking but of the self-giving of men. 
Hence, directly this better spirit has begun to make 
itself felt the triumph of Locarno has been achieved, 
with the promise of yet better things to come. God 
is a great chess player, and He will cry “ Check ! i 
to every solution that contradicts both His own 
nature and that of man. So far from the Sermon 
on the Mount being Utopian, the world will come 
to see that it is the only practical politics so long 


280 


REV. JOHN SCOTT LIDGETT 


as God is God—the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. The Church must respond to this 
master truth. It must not entrench “ our unhappy 
divisions,” but must transcend and transform them 
till our distinctive contributions to the interpretation 
and service of Christ are used, not for purposes of 
separation but for common fellowship and enrich- 
ment in Love. So, then, for all the concerns of 
life, whether of Church or State, whether inter- 
national, economic or social, the message of St. John 
is the watchword for all ages, and especially for this 
present time—‘‘ God is love; and he that abideth 
in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him.” 


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Rev. ARTHUR J. GOSSIP, M.A. 


REV. ARTHUR JOHN GOSSIP, M.A. 


Youncest son of the late Robert Gossip, news- 
paper editor in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and of 
the late Margaret Mundell, his wife. He was 
born in Glasgow, and educated at George Watson’s 
College, Edinburgh University, and New College. 
Became Licentiate of the United Free Church of 
Scotland, 1899; and was ordained the same year 
to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church of 
England. Was minister successively at St. 
Columba’s, Liverpool; West United Free Church, 
Forfar; and St. Matthew’s, Glasgow. Was 
Chaplain at the front, 1917-1918. Now Minister 
of Beechgrove, Aberdeen. Publications: “‘ From 
the Edge of the Crowd,” in Scholar as Preacher 
Series ; and ‘‘ In Christ’s Stead,” being the Warrack 
Lectures for 1925, etc. 


A MESSAGE FOR GREY DAYS 
Rev. Arruur J. Gossip, M.A. 


“Tf the vision tarry, wait for it, for wt will 
come: and it will not be late.’ (Last phrase, 
Moffatt.) Habakkuk i, 3. 


THERE, to begin with, is a claim on you and me, a 
warning that if we wish to be really helpful to God 
and our fellows we must cultivate a certain calm 
and equanimity of mind, a certain valour and 
imperturbability of spirit, that believes in right- 
-eousness and the success of its cause much too 
stoutheartedly to grow afraid even if things do 
drag a bit, that knows God far too well to think of 
doubting Him even if His promises seem slow of 
foot, and our dreams lag, and the time grows longer 
than we hoped. The function of religious people, 
so this tired man heard God saying to his heart in 
dark and trying days when there was not much to 
encourage, what is it? What do I set them in the 
world to do? What is it that I ask of them? 
Is it not largely this—to keep cool and unfidgetty 
when other folk are growing flustered about things ; 
to look out upon this confusing life with steady eyes, 
when those around them, badly scared, have taken to 
glancing back across their shoulders, and there is 
that ominous feeling of panic in the air; to trust Me, 

285 


A MESSAGE FOR GREY DAYs 


not only when that is easy and the sun is shining, 
but when there is most need for faith, yes, and some 
valour in the offer of it. Suppose the times are 
disappointing and disquieting, that I seem to have 
forgotten, appear not to care; that in spite of all 
your efforts nothing, so you judge, is happening. 
Still don’t get nervy and irritable, fussy and on 
edge. Don’t toss your dream impatiently away, 
as something that evidently can never come to pass 
in this dusty work-a-day world of drab realities. 
Still hold to it, work for it, believe in it, expect it. 
If the vision tarry, wait for it: grant Me some 
loyalty, and some tenacity of purpose, and some 
common courage. Give Me that—long enough— — 
and we win. | 

It must, surely, be a little daunting to ardent 
spirits to note how often in the Scriptures that is 
God’s message to His people. Age after age, 
apparently, earnest souls feel hotly that the world 
is out of joint, that something must be done to mend 
things ; yes, and they see what that is, and start up 
eagerly to set about it, sure that they can put it 
through. And, age after age, in a little they are 
standing puzzled, and daunted, and confused, with 
their resolution oozing from them, tired and dispirited. 
For, do what they will and can, so little seems to 
come of it. And it is like that last wild tumult 
of a fight in Lyonnesse when even the king felt, or 
half felt, that all that he had done, and all that 
he had tried, had been in vain; and men fought 
blindly with that horrible fog not only in the air 
280 


REV. ARTHUR FOHN GOSSIP 


but stealing chokingly into their very souls, and 
fell, too many of them, and, as they fell, ‘looked 
up to heaven, and only saw the mist.” 

And, age after age, God has to call to them not 
to allow themselves to be tamed and broken, not to 
grow acquiescent in things as they are, not to 
abandon their audacious hopes, but to keep daring 
and expectant. Ifthe vision tarry, wait for it. Hold 
on a little longer, though your very souls are growing 
so numbed that they can hardly keep their grip. 
Wait, He keeps urging, wait! 

That is a very common message to God's folk. 
And yet to wait can be the hardest thing in the whole 
world. ‘“Wecan do nothing more,” the doctor says, 
“we must just wait.” But that is dreadful. If we 
could help in any way it would not be nearly so hard. 
But to sit still, with empty, useless, idle hands, while 
that dear life hangs in suspense, the thing is mad- 
dening. Or, when an attack was ordered, much 
the worst time was those awful moments lined up 
in the trench, while the officer, his eyes upon his 
watch, waited for the appointed second, with one’s 
every tense nerve strained and twittering, with 
one’s mind running, on and on, with queerly quick 
short, breathless, steps, till one could have screamed : 
“Blow that whistle and let us get over, and be 
done with it, one way or the other. Better that 
than this long agony of waiting.” Yet God often 
asks His folk to wait. 

Not that they are to dawdle about until something 
turns up, or even to stand with their eyes fastened 


287 


A MESSAGE FOR GREY DAYS 


greedily on the horizon. If anything much is to 
happen for God in our time, then we must do it for 
Him, must throw in wholeheartedly all that we have 
into His service, must be eager and zealous over it. 
That is, indeed, where we too often fail; and why, 
not seldom, things move so exasperatingly slowly. 
We are listless, apathetic, only half in earnest. And 
then, with cool effrontery, we throw the blame on God. 
We can’t understand, we say loftily, why One who 
is Almighty does not do far more for this desperate 
world. Why? answers God, because you failed 
Me; because, at the pinch, the faith and courage 
and zeal on which I counted were not there. 

But even if we are in deadly earnest, we must add | 
something more to our equipment or inevitably we 
shall break down under the strain of things before 
the end; must be not only enthusiastic and on fire, 
but at the same time cool and patient ; working as 
tirelessly as if this were the one and only time 
that what we see could ever come to pass, and 
yet not peevish and discouraged if there prove 
to be delay; doing our duty loyally, yet, with a 
quiet and unflurried mind, leaving the times and 
seasons to God’s choosing. That last is not easy; 
and the more in earnest that we are, the harder 
does it grow. Kingsley, quoting the Scripture, 
“He that believeth will not make haste,” flamed 
out in his hot way, “‘ And yet I think that he that 
believeth can do nothing except haste; look at 
the world!’ And, indeed, it is extraordinarily 
difficult not at times to lose patience with God, 
288 


REV. ARTHUR FOHN GOSSIP 


not to be filled with what Hilary of Poitiers called 
‘an irreligious solicitude for Him,” not to have 
the feeling that He is not managing well, and that 
surely He might do vastly more if only He would 
really try, not to keep running on ahead of Him 
like an excited child and back time after time to 
tug impatiently at His hand, seeking to hasten His 
slow steps, and always crying “ Hurry, hurry,” 
not to grow fussy and hot and out of breath, even 
to sulk, declaring with a whimper, like a petted 
bairn, that we won’t play unless our hands are to 
haul down the enemies’ flag, and our eyes are 
allowed to see the final wild exhilarating rush of 
victory, sweeping all before it! 

But it is not that God is slow, or less in earnest 
than we are. Ah! who of us can doubt Him now? 
For who of us has gone the length of Calvary? 
Shall we compare our futile little bits of earnestness 
with that? It is that human nature is much more 
crabbed and stubborn than we with our superficial 
diagnoses realise, that evils have far deeper roots 
than we imagine, and won’t come up, as we hope, 
with one sharp tug; that the road to our ideals is 
much longer than it looks when we set out on it. 
Don’t you remember Masefield ? 


“Not for us are content, and quiet, and peace of 
mind, 
For we go seeking a city that we shall never find. 
Only the road, and the dawn, the sun, and the 
wind, and the rain, 


289 


A MESSAGE FOR GREY DAYS 


And the watch fire under the stars, and sleep, 
and the road again. 

We travel the dusty road, till the ee of the 
day is dim, 

And the sunset shows us spires, away on the 
world’s rim.” 


Yes, says God, this may prove a longer and much 
slower business than you estimate. I have had 
gallant servants who gave Me their whole life, 
everything that they had, and yet they died in 
faith, not having received the promises, but with 
their faces still turned doggedly in their direction, 
and still certain they would come. And if you have 
been set down in a difficult day, can you too give 
Me a like steadfastness, dare you too work on 
unafraid without much to encourage you, but still 
infecting those around you with your unconcerned 
and quiet faith, a faith that never dreams of doubting 
Me? 

“Love, love that once for me did agonise 
Will conquer all things to itself. If late, 
Or soon it be, I ask not, nor advise. 

But, since my God is waiting, I can wait.” 


Faith, hope, love, these are great gifts. And yet 
not faith, not hope, not love, not even all of them 
together, will of themselves bring you through 
with honour. For that, something even more is 
needed. Remember, says St. Anthony, of all the 
virtues, perseverance alone wins the crown. Have 
290 


REV. ARTHUR FOHN GOSSIP 


you the cold dour courage that, checked and beaten 
back, can set its teeth, and hold its ground, and 
have never a thought of giving way? For that is 
often what I need in those who would serve Me, 
says God. If it tarry, wait. 

And so in our own lives. “We all thought,” 
said Baxter, speaking of the Civil War, “ that one 
battle would end it, but we were all very much 
mistaken.’ And so, I suppose, most of us expected 
that our spiritual life would move on, in some ways, 
much faster than it has. We knew we had certain 
temptations, but we were going to knock them on 
the head, and so an end of that ; and yet perhaps 
some of them visit us to this day with the old 
hateful cunning. We were aware that we were 
prone to this and that humbling sin and weakness. 
But Christ would break them for us. Yet, perhaps, 
some of them still stubbornly persist. We saw 
the glory of life as Christ led it, and our hearts ran out 
to that eagerly. But it has proved more difficult 
to weave our matted character into His likeness 
than we thought! We, too, have need of that 
prayer that Paul tells us he kept urging on behalf 
of certain of his friends, that our “ faith may become 
a thing of power.’’ For, as things are, it seems 
sometimes curiously ineffective, does it not, in our 
particular case? Even a grain of it will remove 
mountains, we are promised; and indeed we too, 
like Bunyan, have seen men tumbling about the 
hills with it, seen natures that seemed set rebuilt 
from their foundations upon a new plan, and men 


291 


A MESSAGE FOR GREY DAYS 


and women who had sunk very low transformed 
and glorified beyond belief. But our own records 
somehow seem far tamer and much duller. Ananda, 
Buddha’s favourite disciple, saw comrade after 
comrade reach Nirvana. Yet, though he loved as 
few among them loved, year after year slipped 
past, and for him it seemed far away as ever, and 
the marvellous chance, for all his longing, in his case 
would not work out. And we, too, do have faith 
in Christ, and we, too, do look toward Him; and 
yet, and yet, our faith is not the thing of power it 
manifestly is for many another. Yes, says God, 


sometimes it is very slow. But don’t you throw 


away your hope, hold to it, wait. 

And to teach you that hard lesson, look at Jesus 
Christ, who, though plans broke, and friends deserted 
Him, and God Himself seemed strangely callous to it 
all, held on unflinchingly and waited, though the 
crowds were plainly leaving Him, and a huge storm 
was obviously blowing up, and it did break on Him 
at last, and in the end they nailed Him to a cross ; 
waited even then, unafraid even there, for the vision 
that had tarried, ah! how long, still certain it would 
come! ‘ The patience of Christ,’ says Paul, laying 
his hand on what most struck him in the Master, 
may God direct your fretful hearts to that. If you 
would face life bravely and big-heartedly, keep 
close to Him. For to a certainty you, too, will 
need to learn to wait if you would really serve God 
and the Cause, and not break down at times into 
a whimper of disloyalty, nor be guilty of an insolence 


292 


i 


REV. ARTHUR FOHN GOSSIP 


so gross that it can seek to hector God, to instruct the 
All-Wise, and that, not without a certain peremptory 
sharpness at His dulness. Steady, there! Steady! 
Wait ! 

But further, there is here a promise that may 
well rally the most dispirited. ‘‘It will come,” so 
God tells us; you can count upon that; “it will 
come.” It is no futile fancy, no mere dream, 
maddeningly impossible, as when out in the trenches, 
sick of the mud and the shelling and the war, one 
sat and fancied himself off on leave, saw with 
vividness, the landing in England, and the happy 
journey north, and the arrival in one’s own familiar 
town, the coming up the street, your street, the 
pulling at the bell, the opening door, the little cry 
and outleaping arms, and—home. And with that 
someone spoke or jostled you, and it was gone, was 
far away as ever, and with a jolt you were back in 
the mud and the shelling and the war. Blessedly, 
it is not like that. ‘‘ All we have hoped or dreamed 
of good,” says our brave poet, ‘‘ shall exist, not its 
semblance but itself. The hard that proved too 
hard, the heroic for earth too high,” will all come 
true—will surely all come true. I promise it, says 
God. If you will play your part, you can depend 
on Me. It is upon the road, though you see nothing ; 
the seed is living, and is springing up, and it will 
flower. Winter turns spring, and spring grows 
summer every year. 

Is it not well to be reminded of that sometimes, 
For there is much in history to daunt, and not 


293 


A MESSAGE FOR GREY DAYS 


a little to make one cynical. Here are we, for 
example, all agog over the League of Nations. 
And yet experts, who presumably are cognisant 
of the facts, assure us that since the days of 
Henry VI this is the twenty-sixth attempt to 
eliminate war by some kind of international agree- 
ment that has been started with high hopes ! Twenty- 
five times others have seen the vision that we see ; 
twenty-five times have they pursued it eagerly ; 
and five and twenty times it dimmed, flickered, and 
went out. And now once more we are out on the 
old quest, that has for so long baffled so many 
others. Yes, say many, it is demonstrably useless, 
and a wild foolish chase of what is unattainable, 
that can only leave us hot and breathless, and 
ruffled in our tempers, and depressed. | 
But no, says the prophet, “it will come.” The 
Reformation, too, before Luther’s day, was broken 
more than twenty times. Again and again the 
flames were fiercely stamped out, quenched in 
blood. Yet it did come at last. Over and over, the 
embers that seemed cold grew red again, until there 
dawned a day when the winds of God were abroad 
in the earth; and, almost suddenly, these fanned 
the uncertain flames into a roaring fire that rushed, 
free and untamable, across the world. No effort 
in the cause of truth is ever useless, even when, 
mathematically, the result appears to be exactly 
nothing, except withered hopes, and wasted energies. 
Each new attempt revives the idea in men’s minds, 
keeps it alive, sends some remembrance of it down 


294 


REV. ARTHUR FOHN GOSSIP 


the ages, hands on a high tradition. It is like those 
sham attacks out at the front, that seemed to end only 
in cruel ruin and inexplicable bungling with men’s 
lives. I have spoken to a Divisional Commander, 
before whom as a rule one walked in fear and 
trembling, forgetful of all seemliness, and swept 
away by a hot anger. ‘‘ Look at my boys,” I cried, 
standing there among the ghastly wreckage, “ look 
at my boys!’’ And the man answered, with tears 
in his eyes, “‘ God knows, padre, I did not wish this. 
But, because of this, the enemy’s line is broken 
milesaway!’’ And all these efforts after some great 
truth or high ideal that were baulked or driven back 
were not for nothing. Always we can be absolutely 
sure, even if we are disappointed, and our eyes see 
only tired men who have given much and gained 
nothing at all, that because of this somewhere down 
the coming years the enemy’s line will break. 
Indeed, history makes heartening reading. There 
were once horrible diseases rampant in our land, 
leprosy for one of them. It was not only Edinburgh 
that had its Liberton, its lepers’ town: and many a 
country church still shows the old lepers’ window, 
through which these poor outcasts won some share 
in that from which they were excluded. Everywhere, 
here and there, one came upon that horror, on 
maimed broken lives shut in to a huge, ugly, awful 
misery. And it is gone, gone utterly, like a hideous 
nightmare from which one awakes, and in a little 
while forgets about it. And moral evils that had 
seemed engrained in the make-up of things have 


U 295 


A MESSAGE FOR GREY DAYS 


vanished no less thoroughly. For years, for cen- 
turies, leal hearts strained toward these achieve- 
ments and they seemed no nearer; and yet they are 
here. ‘It will come,” says the prophet ; in God's 
name I promise it, if only we keep valiant. 

True, at the best it is not easy to unravel the 
tangled web of things. The enemy rallies so surpris- 
ingly, and has such uncanny skill in snatching a 
new victory out of crushing defeat. 1 once lived in a 
little town which had in older days a most unenviable 
reputation for consumption. The doctors started 
a crusade; and, slowly, surely, at a gradually quick- 
ening pace, the thing died down ; but, as it died, 
almost with equal steps cancer increased, and the 
last state appeared to be more evil than the first. 
And Morley gives a sombre reading of not a little 
of our confident activities. We see some evil, 
evolve a solution of it, push that through with long 
effort and sacrifice; and straightway the new 
situation may engender some new evil which may 
prove even more intractable and difficult to meet! 
We have won liberty, for instance, and what are we 
doing with that glorious thing, now it is ours ? 
Filling the land with raucous cries, pushing and 
jostling one another in a wild selfish stampede, each 
after our class interest, or personal gain! Aye, it 
is slow, and often disappointing! And yet would 
you have us serfs again? What can be done except 
give us our liberty, and let us learn to use it seemlily 
in time. Believe me, said the Romanist in Reform- 
ation days, if your mad scheme grows real, there 
296 


REV. ARTHUR FOHN GOSSIP 


can be nothing but disaster. For the people are 
not fit for the responsibilities and powers you are 
conceding them. Your churches will be empty, 
your Scriptures mishandled, your land filled with 
half-baked theories of half ignorant minds; you 
need authority to guide and to control, and you 
are wantonly destroying it. Well, the churches ave 
half empty, the Bible is not reverenced as once it 
was, and an amazing mass of confident nonsense is 
being talked with truculent assurance by people with 
small right to an opinion, who do not even know how 
ignorant they are! There may be difficult times 
before us, granted, but would you have us back at 
the old subservience again? Surely a child must be 
set down upon its feet, if it is ever to learn to walk! 
That must cause many a stumble, may mean many 
a sore fall; but only so can it develop the powers 
it is meant to use. And though much may seem 
irritating, vexing, disappointing, still if we keep 
our faces toward the light, and push on as we can, 
it will come in the end. For it is not for nothing 
that the popular mode of thought sees an advance, 
a progress, a slow painful evolution in the trend 
of things. There may be, there is, many a slip 
back, and fall, and blunder. Still, “it does move!”’ 
And “it will come.” 

In our time? that may be. But certainly if we 
are faithful, some time. And is it not enough for us 
to play our part, and let who may be destined for 
that reap the glory? Even Jesus Christ saw little. 
Once by a glorious feat of heroism the battalion 


297 


A MESSAGE FOR GREY DAYS 


saved the line. And three days later as the tired 
boys lay about a barn, speaking with small voices 
almost inaudible through weariness, the papers came. 
By an inexplicable slip the credit of the feat was 
given to a battalion who were miles away, and ours 
was never mentioned. There fell a sombre silence, 
and the Colonel’s face flushed red. And then his 
head went up. ‘‘Gentlemen,”’ he said proudly, 
‘what does it matter who gets the credit of it. We 
know we did it.” Enough for us that we be faithful. 
It will come. : 

And in our own lives also. Perhaps you are 
depressed, dissatisfied with things, haunted by an 
uneasy feeling that after all your faith and efforts 
you are painfully little changed from your original 
uncouthness; that not enough is coming of it, that if 
the real Christ were really in your life surely there 
would be greatly more to show. Look, your heart 
cries, how it was in His time! How everywhere He 
went there were extraordinary happenings, things 
glorious, undeniable and there for all to see. But I, 
what can I show? Towards the end, Marcus Dods, 
whom Robertson Nicoll called the most Christlike 
man that he had ever seen, felt that about himself 
with gnawing acuteness, but used to fortify his 
heart with a chemical metaphor. Into a liquid 
is dropped one drop of a second, and there is no 
result: another, and another, many others, one 
by one, apparently in vain: and then one more, 
precisely like the rest, and of a sudden, not as the 
outcome of that last alone, but as the culmination 


298 


REV. ARTHUR FOHN GOSSIP 


of the whole seemingly useless process, everything 
is changed! And day by day doggedly we pray, 
and hope, and toil, and believe. And what is there 
to show for it? Not much, to outward seeming, 
it may be; and yet is far more going on than our 
eyes see? And one day may one other prayer, 
one other ordinary act of common faith, one more 
looking toward Jesus Christ bring the long process 
to its culmination, and we waken satisfied, because 
in His likeness—at last ? Sudden or slow, dramatic 
or invisible, “it will come ”’—it will come! After 
all, says Samuel Rutherford, the end is sure: a long 
steep road, a tired footsore traveller, and a warm 
welcome home, that is the worst of it. 

For, says the prophet, ‘“‘it will not be late.”’ 
That is the fear that often haunts us. It is too 
late, men say, of the old land. She has heeled so 
far over in the gale that she can’t right herself—is 
doomed! Such talk, one fancies, is the way to bring 
disaster on us. If only we will pay our taxes 
cheerfully, and face a more pinched way of life 
than we would naturally choose, and think, not 
only of our own, but other people’s interests, please 
God, we will come through it yet. But that “ too 
late” is a grievous reality: a grim and fearsome 
fact of life. The other day I was taking the service 
at a baby’s funeral; and, among others, read the 
passage, “‘ There shall be no more death, neither 
sorrow, nor crying, for the former things are passed 
away.” And then I looked across at the mother, 
wondering if that was helping her, or only wounding 


299 


A MESSAGE FOR GREY DAYS 


her poor heart? It is a bonnie promise! Ah, 
if only it had come in time! But in one sense at 
least, its fulfilment is too late for her. Her boy is 
dead! And often that is what we feel about 
ourselves. Once, not a doubt, it might have 
been. We might have really closed with Christ, 
and really taken what He offers us. But now, 
our character is fixed, our habits are settled, 
the channels cut in which the rivers must run 
to the end. It is too late. And there is dreadful 
truth in that. ‘Sleep on now,” said the Master 
sadly, the glorious office He had offered His friends 
left unaccepted and refused, sleep on, it does not 
matter now. The chance is lost, the opportunity 
is past, sleep on. The boy who in the afternoon 
repented of his surliness and went, could only offer 
a few hours of work at most, not a full day. That 
had become impossible for ever. And every failure 
in a way is irremediable. Always our record must 
be to the end by that amount less than it might 
and should and could have been. The crooked 
can’t be made straight; what is lacking can’t be 
numbered. And you and I look wistfully across at 
Christ, and then sadly enough at what we are. 
That is what I might have been, and this is what I 
am: that is what I was offered, and this is what 
I chose! Fool that I was, but now—it is too late. 

But the whole point of the Gospel is that, in 
one glorious way, it is not yet too late for anyone. 
If you have not seen that in Christ, have you seen 
Christ at all? Always He faced the poorest, the 
300 


REV. ARTHUR FOHN GOSSIP 


most soiled and tangled life, with the sure confidence 
that even yet it could be righted ; yes, and He would 
do it now. And how often and how strangely 
He was justified in cases that looked just impossible ! 
Aye, and why should He not be so in you and me? 
It is to us, remember, to plain ordinary folk like 
youand me, that He gives His bewildering promises ; 
it is on us He makes His staggering claims; it is for 
us He prays those astounding prayers of His with 
their tremendous hopes! To that, then, He feels, 
even yet we can attain! 


“ Death closes all: but something e’er the end, 

Some work of noble note, may yet be done. 

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks : 

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs : 
the deep 

Moans round with many voices. Come, my 
friends, 

Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” 


No, it is not too late, even for you and me, to 
throw ourselves on Jesus Christ ; really to take, 
really to use, that strange power that He offers, 
and so really grow, yes you and I, into His blessed 
likeness: not too late for God’s dream of us to come 
really true. 

Up! up! and back into the thick of things with 
steady hearts and quiet eyes. And, even “if it 
tarry, wait for it! For it will come, and it will not 
be late.” 

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Rey. W. E. ORCHARD, D.D. 


REV. WILLIAM EDWIN ORCHARD, D.D. 


MrnisTeER of the King’s Weigh House Church, 
Duke Street, W., since 1914. Dr. Orchard 
received private tuition, and later went to West- 
minster College, Cambridge. He was ordained 
at Enfield in 1904. In the following year he 
became B.D., and D.D.in 1909. His publications 
include “ Evolution of Old Testament Religion,” 
“Modern Theories of Sin,’? ‘‘ Problems and 
Perplexities,”’ ‘‘ The Temple : A Book of Prayers,” 
“The Outlook for Religion,’ ‘‘ Divine Service : 
Order of Service for Public Worship,” “‘ The 
BERS Companion,” and ‘‘ Foundations of 
aith.” 


GOD’S FORGIVENESS DEPENDENT 
UPON OURS 
By tHe Rev. W. E. Orcuarp, D.D. 


“Tf ye forgive men their trespasses, your 
heavenly Father will also forgive you. But uf 
ye forgive not men their trespasses, neiher will 
your Father forgive your trespasses.”’ 

Matthew vi, 14, 15. 


Our Lord’s teaching is very full and frequent on 
the subject of forgiveness ; not, as in the Epistles, 
so much on why we can rely upon the forgiveness 
of God, but on why we must forgive our fellow-men. 
This differing emphasis between the Epistles and 
the Gospels is not to be pressed to a false contrast, 
or to be explained as due to the false development 
of theological concern. While St. Paul is concerned 
to show how it is possible for God to forgive at all, 
and how we may be assured of His forgiveness, he 
is equally emphatic that we must forgive as we are 
forgiven: ‘even as the Lord forgave you, so also 
do ye.” It is true that to Christ the possibility of 
God’s forgiveness seems to present no problem, and 
He can command us to forgive, even to seventy 
times seven, as if it were perfectly easy. Never- 
theless the Apostolic writings have not invented a 
difficulty here. It was no difficulty to the mind of 


305 


GOD’S FORGIVENESS DEPENDENT UPON OURS 


Christ simply because He Himself was divine; and 
despite His belief that men could carry out 
the command to forgive, the frequency of the 
exhortation, the sternness of the condition laid down, 
and his parable of the ‘“ Unforgiving Servant ”’ 
show that He knew very often men would not 
forgive. Those who say Christ assumes the Father’s 
forgiveness and.so therefore can we; Christ taught 
that men should forgive and therefore nothing else 
is needed but to carry out His teaching; forget the 
place of the Teacher in His teaching, and the 
ransom which He taught He had come to effect, 
It has been said Christ did not so much come to 
preach the Gospel as that there should be a Gospel 
to preach. Christ’s teaching was preparatory to 
the work He wrought by His death, and is meant 
to show how necessary it was that He should die, 
both to convince men of the Father’s forgiveness 
and to enable them in turn to forgive. The very 
perfection that He commands is intended to make 
us aware of what a change must take place in us 
before we can carry it out. Those who take the 
teaching of Christ, and find no necessity of asking 
who the Teacher was, and whether He can help us 
to obey His teaching, surely cannot seriously have 
attempted it. We cannot fail to notice that many 
who appeal to the teaching of Christ in order to 
dismiss all else in Christianity, also mainly use it 
for the purpose of condemning others; which 
shows they have never so much as begun to under- 
stand it, and cannot themselves have tried it. On 
306 


REV. WILLIAM EDWIN ORCHARD 


the subject of forgiveness its very difficulty prevents 
an easy explanation. 

It is important to notice that our Lord often 
connects this subject of forgiveness with the practice 
of prayer. ‘‘ When ye stand praying, forgive, if 
ye have aught against anyone; that your Father 
which is in heaven may also forgive you.” This 
saying implies that we ought not to begin our 
prayers without first seeing that we do not cherish 
unforgiving feelings against anyone; for the in- 
ference is that we shall get no further if we do; 
God will not forgive us, and we shall therefore not 
so much as get in touch with Him. Here may be 
the reason why some of us never advance far along 
the path of prayer. The importance of this is 
emphasised by our Lord in a very strange way. 
He actually inserts a reminder on this subject into 
the very centre of the Lord’s prayer: “as we 
forgive them that trespass against us.”’ That must 
often have caused us a certain amount of per- 
plexity, for it is difficult to turn that part of the 
petition into real prayer. It looks like a somewhat 
Pharisaic statement that we ourselves forgive, and a 
somewhat irreverent reminder that, therefore, God 
ought to forgive us. If we make the words actually 
part of our prayer, it seems to necessitate our 
asking for forgiveness only in the measure in which 
we forgive others: “forgive us our trespasses as 
much as we forgive.” The only solution of the 
difficulty seems to regard this phrase as a reminder 
to ourselves: and that gives a certain sanction to 


397 


GOD’S FORGIVENESS DEPENDENT UPON OURS 


the use of prayer, not only as objective worship 
and petition, but for its subjective effect. In 
another place, our Lord seems to assume that we 
should allow our worship to be broken into by the 
remembrance that other people may not be forgiving 
us, and that we should try to put that right before 
we can look upon our worship as perfect, or the 
purpose of our offering fulfilled. 

However difficult these conditions may seem, they 
obviously insist that the forgiveness of others enters 
into the most intimate concerns of our religion 
and has a most important effect upon the reality 
of our communion with God. Any deliberate with- 
holding of forgiveness must entirely negative the 
action of grace, makes our prayer ineffective and 
destroys all possibility of coming into close contact 
with God. 


YET SO MANY PEOPLE FIND IT HARD TO FORGIVE. 


(x1) This is a frequent confession with the frank, 

(a) They declare that they feel resentment 
when wrong is done to them; when people are 
unjust, unkind, cruel or false they are deeply 
wounded, and their wounds beget in them thoughts 
of dislike, hostility or vengeance. They declare 
they have the greatest difficulty in overcoming 
these feelings; they tend to persist and recur even 
after a long period, and when they have really 
tried to forgive. Such, therefore, are often doubtful 
whether they have really forgiven. Others go 
308 


REV. WILLIAM EDWIN ORCHARD 


further; they declare positively they cannot for- 
give; it demands from them a quite impossible 
attitude, and they are bewildered that Christ 
should ever have asked anything so impossible, or 
have made the divine forgiveness dependent upon 
something so difficult to attain. 

(b) People often say they can forgive, but they 
cannot forget. 

They wish the person who has done them wrong 
no harm, they do not actually feel hostile; but 
very often they do not want to have anything 
further to do with that person. Their attitude is 
entirely negative if only they keep out of his way ; 
but his presence, or even the very thought of him 
always brings back the memory of what has hap- 
pened, and their conception of him is coloured, or 
even dominated by the wrong he once did. They 
may profess that this is nothing more than the 
inability to forget a historic fact; but when a 
person who seeks forgiveness is met by the declara- 
tion, ‘‘ I can forgive, but I cannot forget,” it is not 
strange if he suspects that the forgiveness is not real, 
or at any rate that it appears to him worthless. 

(c) Some people declare they can forgive wrongs 
done to themselves, but not to others. 

This attitude has about it less apparent danger ; 
it is not motived by our own personal suffering ; 
it looks like an impersonal hatred of injustice, on 
which we are surely dependent for the healthy 
condition of society. Nevertheless, this attitude 
often shows that the nature of forgiveness is not 


399 


GOD’S FORGIVENESS DEPENDENT UPON OURS 


understood, and the violent feeling which can be 
worked up against national enemies in time of war, 
and even remain long after it, or the execration 
spent upon some person who has committed a public 
crime, are sufficient indications that the duty of 
forgiveness is not accepted. Moreover, this dis- 
tinction between wrongs done to oneself and wrongs 
done to others.is generally made in reference to 
someone who is connected with us. It is because 
of his injury and what he has suffered that we 
cannot forgive the wrongdoer. But it is obvious 
that now we are touched because we feel the injury 
of someone closely bound up with ourselves to be 
an injury to ourselves. We may see the operation 
of this in national refusals to forgive ; nations who 
are not at all moved when a wrong is done by one 
foreigner to another will be set ablaze with a demand 
for vengeance when the wrong has been done by a 
foreigner against one of their own nation. The 
distinction is therefore not altogether to be trusted. 

(2) The very difficulty of forgiveness brings to 
light its nature. 

(a) There is more hope that forgiveness will be 
understood where difficulty is felt than where it is not. 

Some people appear to be of a naturally forgiving 
temperament. But this is often due to reasons 
that make it quite worthless. Such people some- 
times are very insensitive, or they are too proud to 
take any notice of the words or actions of people 
they despise. To some the profession of forgiveness 
comes easily, because they have never really been 
310 


REV. WILLIAM EDWIN ORCHARD 


faced with a concrete example of any serious wrong 
done to themselves. And such people may be loud 
in demanding the forgiveness of national or social 
enemies, because they have had no real experience of 
what forgiveness entails, yet when they are faced 
with a demand that touches them personally they 
hopelessly fail. There are people also who declare 
that forgiveness is easy simply because they believe 
that there is never really anything to forgive: they 
believe in forgiveness because they do not believe 
in sin. If anyone ever does wrong it is unavoid- 
able, or it is due to ignorance, or it is from bondage 
to causes beyond control. It is unnecessary to 
point out that in all these cases we have not even 
come within sight of the real problem. 

(b) The difficulty felt is however sometimes 
imaginary. 

It sometimes seems to be thought that to forgive 
entails ignoring the wrong done, either by not feeling 
the injury or by refusing to believe that anyone 
could really be so wicked as to wish us evil; all 
wrong being done by inadvertence or lack of thought. 
It will be seen that this arises from the idea that 
forgiveness means there is nothing to forgive. 
For some people imagine that forgiveness simply 
means shutting your eyes to evil everywhere, refusing 
to take any notice, and blurring over people’s faults 
either by reminding ourselves that we have just the 
same faults, or by concentrating upon their good 
points. But it is quite obvious that this is not 
what the Scriptures assume to be the basis of the 

x 311 


GOD’S FORGIVENESS DEPENDENT UPON OURS 


Divine forgiveness. In some circumstances a person 
may be heard to say: “I hope he will never know 
the injury he has done, or how he has made me 
suffer.” This seems very noble and generous, 
indeed it appears to outstrip anything that the 
Divine forgiveness embraces, for we have all been 
taught that God may forgive our sins without 
necessarily remitting their penalty. It is the 
example of such generosity that some people feel 
they cannot rise to, if that is what is meant by 
forgiveness. And if it means desiring that the 
person who has done wrong should remain in 
ignorance, it is not wishing that person good but 
real evil: for we cannot rise higher until we recognise 
the wrong we have done, and repent of it; and that 
can hardly be accomplished without some knowledge 
of how the injury has affected the other person and 
without our feeling what he has suffered. 

(c) The human difficulty of forgiveness illustrates 
the divine. 

Forgiveness is much more than the passing over 
of sin, or refusing to take any notice of it. It is 
not even, as has sometimes been declared, that God 
does not allow our sin to make any difference in 
His attitude towards us. For all this would leave 
us in our sins and let them have their effect upon us; 
and that literally means refusing to forgive at all. 
Forgiveness entails even more than wishing the 
person good, it means so wishing his good that 
every effort is made to save the sinner from the 
most serious consequence of his sin, namely, the 
312 


REV. WILLIAM EDWIN ORCHARD 


moral deterioration that must accompany the 
deliberate commission of any evil. We may believe 
that the Divine attitude is unchanged; or rather 
that man’s sin calls out from God a still more 
solicitous love, because the sinner is in a more 
dangerous condition ; forgiving God may always be, 
and there is no need for theology to discern a problem 
in God remaining changeless, however we may 
change; the problem is, how is forgiveness to be 
made effective? It is here where the Cross of 
Christ has to come in, His sacrifice is foreseen to be 
necessary, is accepted by Him and is a satisfaction 
to the Father’s heart; not because it enables God 
to remain forgiving despite the offence done against 
His law and majesty, but because it enables Him 
to apply His forgiveness to the hearts of men. 
Christ’s sacrifice assures men that God remains 
forgiving, even though they try to pain or destroy 
Him. Christ’s sacrifice is the one perfect oblation 
and satisfaction, because He is willing to let men’s 
sin fall upon Himself, and does so in such wise 
as to open their hearts to the grace of repentance, 
because then they see what their sin has done to 
Him ; and to the grace of sanctification, in gratitude 
for what He was willing to bear for them. This 
shows that the difficulty of forgiveness is elsewhere 
than where most people feel it. 


313 


GOD’S FORGIVENESS DEPENDENT UPON OURS 


It 1s CLEAR WuHy THE DIVINE FORGIVENESS 
DEPENDS ON OURS. 


(1) This condition might appear to limit the 
Divine forgiveness. 

(a) It seems to cut across the Evangelical inter- 
pretation of forgiveness. Evangelicalism appears 
to make the Divine forgiveness unlimited, save that 
the Divine arrangement for it must be accepted. 
The sole difficulty about this arrangement is that 
men are often too proud to accept forgiveness. 
They will not believe they have wronged God, or if 
they have, then they refuse to accept forgiveness 
at His hands. They feel the resentment which, 
by a curious perversion of conscience, we often feel 
against those we have wronged. They would 
prefer to do something in expiation of their sin, and 
not simply have to admit that there is nothing they 
can do, save to receive a forgiveness which owes 
nothing to them and of which they are not worthy. 
The mistake of Evangelicalism was in regarding 
God as having to be moved to be forgiving towards 
us, instead of seeing that the difficulty is in making 
His forgiving attitude effective. There is no limit 
to God’s forgiving feeling and intention; but we 
ourselves can limit forgiveness by refusing to let 
it work effectually in us; and that 1s done when we 
ourselves refuse to forgive. 

(b) This seems to make forgiveness depend upon 
human merit. This is one of the grave outstanding 
issues between Evangelicalism and Catholicism. 


314 


REV. WILLIAM EDWIN ORCHARD 


The one seems to stand for justification by faith 
only, to trace everything to grace, and to give no 
meritorious significance to anything that man can 
do: and this seems to be the teaching of the 
Epistles. Catholicism seems to teach that while 
God is of course the ultimate and spontaneous 
source of grace and forgiveness, man can, and must 
do something to earn fresh grace, and to make it 
effective. And this is what the Gospels seem over 
and over again torecognise. Have wenota sufficient 
example of it in our text? If you forgive, you 
will be forgiven ; the one is the reward for the other. 
We shall not here attempt to reconcile two points 
of view that have been driven to extremes, and 
stay to point out how an unbalanced emphasis 
has ended in a repulsion from the central truth 
which unites them both. That would take too long 
and demand a perfection of theological thought for 
which we are hardly yet ready. 

(c) But it is admitted by all that the Divine 
forgiveness is limited by the unforgivable sin. 

The Gospels are perfectly clear that all sins are 
forgivable, save blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 
The unforgivable sin is so difficult to determine 
that it is generally shelved and regarded as some 
very unusual, extreme and almost impossible sin. 
But does not the unwillingness to forgive come under 
this very category? God’s forgiveness, as our own 
Anglo-Saxon word wonderfully brings out, is nothing 
else than the further giving of Himself. To forgive 
means simply to give intensively. When men sin, 


315 


GOD’S FORGIVENESS DEPENDENT UPON OURS 


God seeks to give Himself to them only the more. 
Now if that is what is happening to us when we 
are forgiven, if we do not pass this on to others we 
pervert its very nature; we take the holy grace 
that has come to us and we hinder its further 
operation and change its character. It is really 
worse than speaking evil of the Holy Ghost, it is 
turning a holy ~power to an unholy use, receiving 
forgiveness, sending forth unforgiveness. 

(2) The principle involved can only be understood 
when we understand what forgiveness is. 

(a) Forgiveness is an activity which seeks to 
reclaim the sinner. Forgiveness is nothing else 
but love, persisting unchanged in its nature and 
pertinacious in its purpose when the object of its 
love is threatened by the disaster which sin involves, 
Forgiveness, therefore, is simply love, but love 
refusing to be altered; it goes on loving despite 
the fact that its object has wronged the lover and 
made itself unloving. It is love calling up all its 
powers to meet a desperate need ; it is love deter- 
mined that no suffering on its part, and no suffering 
on the part of the sinner, shall turn aside its purpose. 
This is what God’s forgiveness is in action towards 
us; our forgiveness of others must be similar, 
though, of course, in human degree. It is made 
possible for us only when we take God’s view of 
things, and we see that it is the person who does 
wrong, and not the person wronged, who is the 
more harmed and is in greater danger. It does 
not mean that we must not feel the injury done, 
316 


REV. WILLIAM EDWIN ORCHARD 


any more than Christ did not feel the pain and 
shame of the Cross; neither does it mean that the 
other person must not feel it ; he must; though 
not in mere transference of pain, but in the far 
deeper pain that comes in penitence for the wrong 
he has done. To forgive anyone, therefore, does 
not mean that we take no notice of their wrong, 
or that we must try to save them from suffering. 
If we care for them very much we shall do our best 
to see that they understand and feel what they have 
done. But what we must not do is to wish them 
to suffer that consequence of sin which is deteriora- 
tion of character and, ultimately, damnation. 
These considerations should enable us to rise more 
easily to forgiveness, because we can lift our own 
injured feelings into communion with the sufferings 
of Christ upon the Cross, knowing that there must 
be suffering if the effect of sin shall be turned back. 
This attitude sublimates the natural feeling of 
vengeance: we can still desire that the person 
who has wronged us shall suffer; but in penitence, 
not in penalty. 

(b) If we do not pass on God’s forgiveness it 
becomes inoperative in us. God continues to us 
the offer of His grace, and indeed His very presence 
with us, whatever we do, until it is useless because 
we are at last for ever dead to His presence. But 
His presence everywhere is a forthgoing activity ; 
it cannot therefore be confined in us without our 
making ourselves dead to it. His forgiveness is the 
intense activity of grace, which must not only act 


317 


GOD’S FORGIVENESS DEPENDENT UPON OURS 


upon, but act through us; indeed, if it does not 
pass through us, it cannot even enter into us. If 
God’s forgiveness is to be made effective through 
the Cross, it is because the Cross makes us not only 
assured of forgiveness, but ourselves actually for- 
giving. If we do not forgive, we have misunderstood 
what forgiveness is, we have failed to understand 
the Cross, and it must remain to us of none effect. 
If, therefore, we are unforgiving, by that very act 
we prove that God’s forgiveness has never yet taken 
effect in us; so that, while God remains forgiving, 
we remain unforgiven. To refuse deliberately to 
forgive someone else, in the same way as we are | 
forgiven through the Cross, would mean to refuse 
the forgiveness of God for ourselves. Therefore, 
the law is perfectly simple and automatic. Our 
being forgiving does not condition God’s being 
forgiving, but it does condition our being forgiven. 

(c) The importance of our being forgiving is 
therefore clear. Anything like a real refusal to 
forgive excludes us at once from the operation of 
God’s forgiveness, and until that mood passes and 
that temptation is resisted we are in extreme 
spiritual danger. We must distinguish, however, 
between the danger in all temptation and the real 
disaster which follows our yielding. We are often 
tempted to think hostile or vengeful thoughts, but 
they must enter our will and be deliberately wel- 
comed and adopted before we have really sinned, 
and the sin must become finally determined before 
we have utterly killed the grace of God within us. 
318 


REV. WILLIAM EDWIN ORCHARD 


The feeling of an injury is no sin, though, if long 
brooded over and not lifted up to the Cross, it will 
bring the temptation to vengeance, and that may 
lead to such hostile feelings and diabolical desires 
as seek nothing less than the wrong-doer’s damnation. 
Therefore we should turn all our thoughts about 
those who have wronged us into prayer; prayer 
for their salvation, which will demand penitence and 
repentance. That desire for retaliation which is 
so natural to us, if we let the Divine love have its 
way in us, will be sublimated to return good for 
evil, and will seek the sinner out, not to condemn 
him for what he has done, but to convince him of it ; 
and that not to relieve our feelings, but to save his 
soul, That is why there is more hope for the 
deeply sensitive person who feels injury than for 
the slothful person who does not feel, and does not 
care enough even to tell people the wrong they have 
done. If all this still seems very hard, we shall 
find help if we consider very often how God has 
forgiven us; if we spend a great deal of time before 
the Cross, seeking there to realise what Christ’s 
forgiveness cost, and to let it have its full effect 
upon us. It will be still easier if we recognise that 
all we have to do is not to rise to some superhuman 
height of virtue by ourselves, but to let the love 
of God flow through us in its redeeming power out 
towards others: to forgive, because only thus can 
we give expression to the action of God’s forgiveness 
within ourselves; and by expressing it thus, we 
shall come to feel more assured of it for ourselves. 


319 


GOD’S FORGIVENESS DEPENDENT UPON OURS 


So let us not only kneel at the Cross and let the 
blood of Christ fall on us to cleanse us from our sins, 
but let us seek union with Christ crucified so that 
His blood may flow through us unhindered till 
we are utterly forgiven, because wholly forgiving. 


320 


Rey. J. D. JONES, D.D. 


REV. JOHN DANIEL JONES 


M.A. of Victoria University, D.D. of St. Andrew’s 
University. Born April 13th, 1865. Son of 
J. D. Jones of Ruthin, schoolmaster and musician. 
Educated at Towyn Academy, Chorley Grammar 
School, Owens College, Manchester, and Lanca- 
shire Independent College. Married Emily Cun- 
liffe of Rookwood, Chorley, who passed away in 
1917. Minister at Lincoln, 1889-1898; Bourne- 
mouth, 1898. Chairman of Lincolnshire Congre- 
gational Union, 1898; Chairman of Hampshire 
Congregational Union, 1903. Honorary Secretary 
of Congregational Union of England and Wales 
since 1919. Twice Chairman of Congregational 
Union of England and Wales, first 1909-1910; 
second, 1925-1926. Moderator of the Federal 
Council of Free Churches, 1921-1923. Author of 
the following books amongst others: ‘‘ The Gospel 
of the Sovereignty,”’ ‘‘ The Hope of the Gospel,”’ 
“The King of Love,” ‘‘ If a Man Die,’’ ‘‘ The Lord 
of Life and Death,”’ ‘‘Commentary on St. Mark,”’ 
four vols., ‘‘Model Prayer,’’ ‘‘The Glorious 
Company of the Apostles,” ‘‘ Things most surely 
believed,’’ ‘‘ The Greatest of These.’’ 


HOW JESUS CLOSES THE BOOK 
Rev. J. D. Jonzs, D.D. 
‘And he closed the book.’ St. Luke iv, 20. 


I supPOsE every preacher gets now and again this 
kind of experience while he is studying a passage, 
some sentence or phrase in it will leap out of it and 
lay hold of his mind. This little phrase I have 
quoted as my text did that for me as I studied this 
passage in the course of my regular Scripture study. 
In and of itself it seems a perfectly simple statement 
of fact. On that particular Sabbath day Jesus, 
either of His own impulse or at the invitation of 
the ruler of the synagogue, had stood up in that 
congregation of his fellow townsmen to read the 
second lesson. He chose as His lesson—or it was 
chosen for him—the opening verses of the sixty-first 
chapter of Isaiah. ‘“ The Spirit of the Lord is upon 
me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings 
to the poor; he hath sent me to proclaim release 
to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, 
to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach 
the acceptable fear of the Lord.” And _ having 
read these verses He folded up the roll again and 
handed it to the attendant. “‘ He closed the book.”’ 
He had come to the end of the lesson or, at any rate, 
He had read all the verses which for His purpose 


323 


HOW FESUS CLOSES THE BOOK 


He wanted to read. And in thus closing the book 
when the lesson was read, He only did what everyone 
else did who was called upon to discharge a similar 
duty—what, indeed, we do still; for still when the 
lesson is finished we close the Book. And yet 
somehow I felt that while it was true that every 
reader on previous Sabbaths had closed the book 
when the lesson. was done, no one had ever closed it 
as Jesus had done. There was a finality about 
the act of Jesus which did not belong to any other 
closing. The phrase suggested things to me beyond 
itself. It wasn’t the mere mechanical folding of 
the roll it suggested, but that in a unique and 
spiritual sense Jesus ‘“‘ closed the book.’ He closed 
it in the sense of finishing it, completing it. The 
book He held in His hand from which He read was 
an “unfinished ’’ book. It still wanted the final 
chapter that explains all and straightens all out. 
Jesus supplied it. “‘ He closed the book.”’ 

And that is the first truth to which I wish to call 
your attention. Jesus is thecompletion and fulfilment 
of the book of the prophet Isaiah, and every other 
prophetic book and of the whole Old Testament. ‘‘ This 
day,” said Jesus about the wonderful prophecy He 
had read out, “ hath this Scripture been fulfilled in 
your ears.’’ The prophet who penned it thought it 
was all going to be fulfilled in the Return of the 
Jewish exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem. But it 
wasn't. JI do not know whether the great prophet 
who first saw this gleaming vision lived to see the 
Return actually take place. I rather imagine he 


324 


REV. JOHN DANIEL FONES 


did, for Cyrus had already begun his career of 
conquest when he wrote, and it was the final victory 
of Cyrus over Babylon that made the Return possible. 
But if he did live to see it, he must soon have dis- 
covered that it was not going to fulfil his dream. 
The first years of the history of the returned exiles 
make humbling and disappointing reading. But 
the prophet did not, because of this disappointment, 
expunge this vision from his book. He left it 
there, he knew someone would one day arise to 
fulfil it. It remained there an unfulfilled prophecy 
for centuries—like some great symphony waiting 
for the final triumphant chords, like some painting 
wanting the final touch that was to make it a thing 
of beauty, like some building waiting for its corner 
stone—unfinished, incomplete, expectant, until Jesus 
came. He was the one anointed to preach good 
tidings to the poor and proclaim release to the 
captives. 

“ This day,’”’ He cried, ‘‘ hath this Scripture been 
fulfilled in your ears.’ He supplied the final, 
completing touch. “‘ He closed the book.” And 
all this is true not only of the book of the prophet 
Isaiah, it is true of the whole Old Testament. That 
was all the Scripture in existence at the time of 
this visit to Nazareth. And the Old Testament 
was an unfinished book. It was confessedly incom- 
plete. The Old Testament from its first page to its 
last is an anticipatory book. It tells not of some- 
thing completed and done. It tells of something 
expected, something future, something yet to 


325 


HOW FESUS CLOSES THE BOOK 


come. Its gaze is always forward. Throughout its 
pages you can hear the tramp of the Coming One. 
The tramp gets louder as you follow the book 
through the dim aisles of the centuries. But to 
the last He remains the Coming One. He is still 
the expected One, but He has not arrived. The 
Old Testament is like those stories that are published 
by instalments.in our magazines, every instalment 
having these words written at the close, “to be 
continued in our next.’’ That is the Old Testament. 
It is an unfinished story. That is what you get 
written at the close of the prophet Malachi, “to 
be continued in our next.” And then Jesus came, 
and all the expectations of the Old Testament 
found their fulfilment in Him, all its sacrificial 
system found its explanation in Him, the unfinished 
story found its completion in Him. “He closed 
the book.” 

Somehow this phrase reminded me of the story 
of Cologne Cathedral. According to all accounts, 
the cathedral is easily the most beautiful and 
commanding edifice in the city, indeed, according 
to one authority I consulted, it is one of the noblest 
specimens of Gothic architecture in Europe. But 
what a history it has had! They began to build it 
almost seven hundred years ago, in the thirteenth 
century, about the year 1250. The plans for the 
finished building were drawn by some unknown 
genius of an architect as far back as that. But 
for long the cathedral was a mere hint of what its 
architect meant it to be: The choir was finished © 


320 


REV. FOHN DANIEL FONES 


and dedicated in 1322, and building went on more 
or less spasmodically until the beginning of the 
sixteenth century. Then for three centuries the 
cathedral remained truncated, fragmentary, incom- 
plete. Not till the nineteenth century did building 
recommence. Naves, aisles and transepts were opened 
in 1848. But still the spires which were to complete 
the design were wanting. But at length, in 1880, 
these too were finished and the great design was at 
length complete. When those two spires were 
dedicated the book of Cologne Cathedral, begun six 
centuries before, was at length “closed.”” And the 
Old Testament was like Cologne Cathedral. It 
spoke of a great Deliverer and Redeemer to come. 
It drew His picture. For century after century it 
kept adding new details to the picture. And at 
length, in the fulness of time, but long centuries 
after the first vague hint of a Redeemer, long 
centuries after the first beginnings of the Messianic 
expectation, Jesus came! And in Him all the 
expectations and anticipations of the Old Testament 
found their fulfilment. The great redemption scheme 
it had sketched found its completion. The Book 
reached its climax and its end. ‘‘This day hath 
this Scripture been fulfilled in your ears.” ‘“ He 
closed the book.” 

And, generally, it may be said that Jesus ‘‘ closed ”’ 
the great book of Divine Revelation. All through 
man’s history on earth God has been busy disclosing 
to him His Nature, as he was able to bear it. 
The revelation was given line upon line, precept 


Y 327 


HOW FESUS CLOSES THE BOOK 


upon precept, here a little and there a little. No 
age or race was left wholly without witness. For 
God revealed Himself to men in the wonders of 
Nature and in the events of history, and in the 
yearnings and aspirations of their own souls. All 
down the centuries God has been writing a book, 
a book the object of which is to explain Himself to 
men. By divers portions and in divers manners He 
unfolded Himself. And yet in spite of Nature, and 
in spite of history, and in spite of conscience, the 
highest altar the Greeks could raise was an altar 
to “ the unknown God,” while not even the favoured 
Jews could find out the Almighty unto perfection. 
And then, in the fulness of time, God sent His 
Son—the effulgence of His glory and the express 
image of His Person—and in Jesus God has revealed 
everything about Himself that we need to know. 
In Jesus we see God as He really is. In Jesus we 
get not broken glimpses of Him but we see His 
heart. ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the 
Father.” In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the 
Godhead in bodily fashion. Nature speaks of God’s. 
power, and human history speaks of His wisdom, 
and the Hebrew Seers and Prophets speak of His 
holiness: but it is only Jesus who can speak to us of 
His Jove. ‘‘ Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” 
And love is the ultimate truth about God. The 
final secret has been revealed when His love has 
been declared. There is nothing more to be said 
about God. That volume of Revelation which 
had been growing through the centuries was 
328 


REV. JOHN DANIEL FONES 


finished when Jesus came. He “‘closed’’ the 
book. 

What I mean to suggest to you is that Jesus is 
God’s final word. He is the consummation of 
Revelation. When Jesus came to John at the 
Baptism, the Baptist saluted Him as the Lamb of 
God. He saw in Him the fulfilment of prophecy 
and the answer to the eager expectations of long 
centuries. But later, when he was a prisoner in 
the dungeons of Machaerus, lonely and depressed, 
doubts assailed his soul. Jesus was so different 
from the Messiah he had been taught to expect. 
So he sent two of his disciples to put this question 
to Jesus: ‘‘ Art Thou the coming One or are we to 
look for another? ’’ Art Thou He, John asked in 
effect, in whom God is to come near to us and our 
souls are to find rest, or art Thou, like myself, 
merely a forerunner of that Great One? What 
John wanted to know was whether Jesus was just 
another prophet in the long succession or whether 
He was the Messiah of whom all the prophets spoke ; 
whether He was part of the process of revelation 
or whether He was its goal and end. It was a 
vital and critical question which the Baptist asked, 
and it has been asked many a time since his day. 

What are we to make of Jesus? Is He just a 
good man helping us to a fuller knowledge of God, 
but liable in the course of the centuries to be super- 
seded by one who will give us larger knowledge still 
or is He God’s final word ? Is He part of the process 
or is He the goal? In our own days many people 


329 


HOW FESUS CLOSES THE BOOK 


seem to think He is merely part of the process. 
They think He can be superseded and indeed already 
is. Hasn’t Mrs. Besant, for example, said that a 
new star will arise from the East and that the 
greater Messiah who is to displace Jesus is to come 
from India? Are not all these new cults that spring 
up like mushrooms in our midst—new thought, 
theosophy, spiritualism with its so-called revela- 
tions—are not all of them supposed “‘ improvements ” 
upon the revelation given by Jesus? What are 
they but challenges to the finality of Jesus? And 
what are we Christian people to do or say in face of 
these challenges? Are we to become nervous and — 
panicky and trepidant ? Are we to give up our beliet 
that Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning 
and the end, and that in Him God has finally and 
fully revealed Himself? By no manner of means. 
I find evidence of the finality of Jesus in facts like 
these. First this tremendously significant fact, that 
in the twenty centuries that have elapsed since He 
came to earth He has ot been superseded. Attempts 
have been made again and again to displace Him. 
Many so-called Messiahs have arisen in the course 
of the centuries, and for a short time drew a certain 
number of men after them. But they have all had 
their day and ceased to be, but Jesus remains, the 
supreme authority upon God. Substitutes for 
Christianity have again and again made their 
appearance, but they have perished. Nietzsche, 
with his doctrine of the superman, has been the 
last to disappear—but Jesus remains the one 


339 


REV. JOHN DANIEL JONES 


adequate Revelation of that God for whom the 
human soul hungers and thirsts. This fact of our 
Lord’s abiding supremacy is significant. He has 
not been superseded because He cannot be super- 
seded. He is God’s final word. There is nothing 
more to be said. He has “ closed the book.” 

And secondly, that as a matter of fact and ex- 
perience the revelation of God given in Christ 
exactly meets the needs of the human soul—tits 
them as the key fits the lock. All souls are 
athirst for God. Human hearts are restless until 
they find their rest in Him. Men may have 
some real knowledge of God and yet not be. 
at rest because that knowledge is so imperfect. 
The primitive and half savage people of Africa, 
worshipping their fetishes, have some groping 
knowledge of God, but it isn’t a knowledge that 
brings them peace. The people of India and China 
have higher conceptions of Him, but in their case 
again what they know does not bring them real 
rest of heart. But when they see God in Christ, the 
African, the Chinaman, the Hindoo are satisfied. 
They find rest unto their souls. They say, “ Thou, 
O Christ, art all I want.” But isn’t that very 
satisfaction and peace which men get when they 
find God in Christ proof that His revelation is 
complete? Men could never rest content with a 
partial and incomplete revelation, but they do rest 
in Christ. And the reason for that is that He is not 
painfully spelling out some syllable of God’s name 
as the prophets did. He is God’s complete and final 


331 


HOW FESUS CLOSES THE BOOK 


word, In Him the age-long volume of Revelation 
reached its completion. He “closed the book.” 
There is a tremendous word at the end of the 
book of Revelation in which the writer warns men 
against attempting to add to or take from the 
words of the prophecy of that Book. The Seer’s 
words would apply with even greater force to that 
volume which tells the story of God’s disclosing of 
Himself, which took centuries to write and which 
culminated in Christ. No one must dare to take 
away from that record. And no one can add to it. 
In Christ the Revelation is complete. He is God's 
final word. He “ closed the book.” : 
And what a blessed and beautiful ending to the 
Book our Lord supplies! I think most of us like 
to have a ‘“‘ happy ending” to the books we read, 
Modern writers do not often give it to us. They 
seem to think that it is more “ realistic’? to make 
their stories end in tragedy. But in spite of their 
so-called realism we love the ‘‘ happy ending.” 
But for no volume was a “happy ending” so 
essential as for the volume of the unveiling of 
God’s Nature. For in the long run our happiness 
depends not so much on what we are as on what 
God is. If God were harsh and stern, what chance 
of blessedness would there be for any one of us? 
If God should mark iniquity, asks an Old Testament 
saint, which of us would stand? I take the volume 
in my hand and in the early pages there are con- 
ceptions of God to shake the soul with terror, and 
even when I get far on with it, when I get to those 


334 


REV. JOHN DANIEL FONES 


pages in which Jewish seers and prophets tell what 
they knew of God, there are things to make one 
solemn and afraid. ‘‘The Law was given by 
Moses,” and the law is not a thing to make a 
transgressor cheerful, for it speaks of pain and 
penalty. But I pass to the last chapter, the 
chapter which Jesus wrote, and | find the happy 
ending there. The story of Revelation is like the 
story of a day opening in storm and tempest, 
clearing as it got towards noon and afternoon, 
though menacing clouds still hang in the heavens, 
but ending in cloudless and peaceful skies and a 
setting sun of undimmed splendour. With this 
book of the Revelation of God it is all glory and 
splendour at the finish. “ Grace and truth came 
by Jesus Christ.” ‘‘ Grace > is the final word 
Rhoneh Gods weAnd Avhate isi grace’ 2. Grace us 
just stooping, forgiving, redeeming love—love that 
stoops to the unlovely, love that lavishes itself 
on the lost, love that forgives unto seventy times 
seven. The Book ends with a Cross, and on that 
Cross we see uttermost love—love bearing our sins, 
love preparing a way for man to rise to God’s 
sublime abode. God is Love—that is the last word 
of the Book. What a blessed ending! It brings 
hope to a world of sinning men! It speaks to us 
of the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation 
and eternal life. It sets before us the hope of 
glory. ‘By grace are we saved! O, blessed ending ! 
I am glad the book did not end with Moses or with 
Jeremiah or with Isaiah. The last words in it were 


333 


HOW FESUS CLOSES THE BOOK 


written by a Man with pierced hands, and He wrote 
them with His own blood. ‘‘ God is Love,” said 
Jesus. It is the happy ending. He only could have 
written it. But after that there was nothing more 
to be said. He closed the Book. 


But some one may object that by making Jesus 
final I am reducing the Christian religion to a 
stagnant, stationary, unprogressive religion. No! 
I do not—for this reason, that Christianity is not 
a religion of a book, it is a religion of a person. 
Mahommedanism may centre in the Koran, but 
Christianity centres in Jesus. It is He Himself 
that closed the Book. He Himself was the last 
word. The love and grace which complete the 
Revelation are not simply or even chiefly in His 
words, they are in Himself, in what He was and 
did. A religion of a book may become rigid and 
stereotyped—but the religion which centres in 
Jesus never can—for this simple reason, that we 
never get beyond Him. He becomes the more 
wonderful, the more we study Him and the more 
we get to know of Him. He is always revealing 
fresh aspects of His nature to us. “ The sea grows 
ever greater.’”’ The ages have not left Jesus behind. 
We have left many a sage, many a leader, many a 
philosopher behind in the course of the centuries, 
but Jesus marches still in front. We have never 
caught up to Him, we never shall catch up to Him. 
We shall be always like that greatest of His Apostles, 
pressing upwards to the prize of the calling of God 


334 


| 
: 
| 
| 
| 
| 


REV. JOHN DANIEL ONES 


in Christ Jesus. And as we press on towards Christ 
Jesus we shall be all the while growing in an under- 
standing of God—we shall be following on to know 
the Lord. 

There is a certain exhaustlessness about Jesus. 
There is no risk of our becoming stagnant. Our 
Christian faith—if we are sincere and earnest—is 
bound to be a growing and expanding thing, for 
while the final Revelation was given in Christ, while 
He ‘closed the book,’ Christ Himself is to be 
learned and understood, and as for Christ, there 
will be no end to learning. For of Him we can say 
what Sir Isaac Newton said about truth—that 
we are but children picking up a few pebbles on 
the beach, while the great ocean of love and grace 
lies before us waiting to be traversed and explored. 
He closed the Book—but we shall never come to 
the end of Him. And so Christian people will be 
kept aspiring and progressing as they grow in grace 
and the knowledge of their Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. 

And at this point I might well end, for in so 
far as Revelation is concerned I have said all that 
I wish to say. But the little phrase which I have 
quoted as my text has suggested two other things 
to me, and though they are not strictly in line 
with the rest of my sermon, perhaps you will allow 
me in this closing minute just to mention them. 
The first is this: there is another book than the 
book of the Revelation of God which our Lord 
is destined to close, and that is the book of our world’s 


335 


HOW ¥ESUS CLOSES THE BOOK 


history. ‘Then cometh the end, when He shall 
have delivered up the kingdom to God even the 
Father, when He shall have abolished all rule and 
all authority and power, for He must reign till 
He hath put all His enemies under His feet.’”’ It is 
Jesus who is to write “‘finis’’ at the end of our 
world’s troubled and chequered history. It is He 
who is to “close the book.’”’ This is a truth calcu- 
lated greatly to cheer and hearten us in troublous 
and distressful times such as these in which we 
live—it is Jesus who is to close the Book. Sometimes 
we wonder what is to become of this world of ours. 
We wonder in these days, for we see passions and | 
suspicions at work which may well reduce our world 
to ruins. Some people indeed tell us that the world 
is to go down and go out in hideous calamity and 
disaster and that evil is to prove itself supreme. 
I cannot subscribe to that pessimism. I am not 
sure that it doesn’t deserve a worse name than 
pessimism. I am not sure it isn’t blank atheistic 
unbelief. It is not evil, it is not sin, it is not 
wickedness, it is not Satan who is to close the book. 
It is Jesus who is to close the Book. ‘‘ Then cometh 
the end when He shall have delivered up the 
kingdom to God, even the Father.” I am not 
certain about the course of the world’s history, but 
I am quite sure about its finish, There have been 
many pages in the world’s history, and there may 
be many yet written by the hand of Violence, 
written by the hand of Injustice, written by the 
hand of Oppression, written by the hand of Tyranny, 


330 


REV. JOHN DANIEL FONES 


written by the hand of Wickedness—but the last 
page is going to be written by Him who made the 
world His own by the purchase of His blood. He 
is to put down all rule and all authority and power. 
He is to have His enemies beneath His feet. The 
volume which tells the broken and often tragic 
story of our world’s life is to have a “ happy ending,” 
for its last pages will tell of the kingdom of this 
world having become the kingdom of our God and 
of His Christ. Swrsum Corda! The last word 
is not with the devil. It is He, our loving and 
redeeming Lord, who is to “close the book.”’ 
And the other word I want to say is this. Every 
one of us has a volume of his own. There is not 
only the world’s story, there is also your story and 
mine. I dare say there is many a sad and sorrowful 
page in the volume. I dare say there is many a 
page in it we would gladly expunge. And yet these 
volumes of ours too may have a happy ending, if 
He closes the book. ‘Blessed are the dead that 
die in the Lord from henceforth, yea, saith the 
Spirit, for they rest from their labours and their 
works do follow them.” That is the only way to 
have a happy and triumphant end—to let Jesus 
close the book. ‘‘ Lord Jesus,” said Stephen as 
the stones came crashing down upon him, “ receive 
my spirit.” And when he had said this he fell 
asleep. It was a peaceful passing—he fell asleep ; 
Jesus closed the Book. And so | pray it may be 
with us. But then to make sure of having Jesus 
with us we ought to have Him with us all the way. 


337 


HOW FESUS CLOSES THE BOOK 


So let us lay hold of Him now, and walk with Him 
all the days of our pilgrimage. Then shall we too 
have the “happy ending,’ for He will close the 
Book, only it will not be an ending at all but 
a new beginning in the larger liberty and the 
ampler air of the Father’s house. 


338 





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SEF S 


st ritgis 
sit 
an SNR 
Sees 
hE 
Rata 
rae u 


i 
teh i Hi 


ti 
susie 
eee 
Menai 


“F; 


Pe SS 


Pay 
ak a 
et Hanah hy 
ots aa 


re 


=<, 


i 


seen 
o} 
= 


ae 


is 


i 
ah retata 
Ba nega etpaa 
Hi aii 


ve 


eile 

i renee tas) Gre 

sey AL 
rsa uh 


Reese 
aT gia a li 


eras 


LESS. 


3 
ra 


pe rk pear, 
ope ae Se pier pe 
ras 


eee reer sa 
ti ipa epee 
=e, —F 
See 
xg 


Naas 
ne m AR 
RO ai ie 

ht 


5 
nie ane 


| 
Nor 
i 


Ear ate: 

sip eraere 
=; 

z 


Fe 


So v1 
aa i 
Hearst 


FRE 
tee 
a 


SSE SE = zs 
ar 


Pare 


= 
BES 
See 


ie Poy 


Ss ¢ 
*; 
re 


Eee 


a 
ips 
SPIE 
ss 


ae 


es, 


Eerie 


Sr = 
IIT 


rate 
rea 


ort 
=~ 
FF 
ise 
Sepa t nF; 
arene 
<> 


PSop FEST 
5 = 


etre, 
SR 


tri zizi 


ieee 
pales ae 


Bud tee oe 





= 


